


The Picture of Steve Rogers (and other stories, as read by Wanda Maximoff)

by andathousandyearsmore



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: #majorcharacterpeggycarter, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Awesome Wanda Maximoff, BAMF Bucky Barnes, BAMF Steve Rogers, BAMF Wanda Maximoff, Canonical Character Death, Endgame stucky, F/M, FWB, Feels, Flirty Steve Rogers, Friends With Benefits, Heavy Angst, Humor, Kinda, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Maximoff Twin Feels, Minor POV Steve Rogers, Minor Pietro Maximoff/Steve Rogers, Multi, Multilingual Steve Rogers, No Sharon Carter Hate, Oblivious Avengers, Old Peggy Carter, POV Wanda Maximoff, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Pining, Pining Bucky Barnes, Pining Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Wanda Maximoff/Vision, Quote: I'm with you 'til the end of the line, Quote: You didn't see that coming? (Marvel), Relationship Reveal, Secret Relationship, Secrets, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers is Not a Virgin, Team as Family, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, Troll Steve Rogers, Unhappy Ending, Wakes & Funerals, Wanda Maximoff & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug, Wordcount: Over 30.000, also kinda - Freeform, author doesn’t care at this point, author knows that this is not how science works, bonus points if you can catch them all, ladies and gentlemen welcome to my area of specialty: angsty endings, look at me putting a lit class to use, multilingual Bucky Barnes, rest in peace peggy carter, sad bucky barnes, she loves science most of the time, that's only quickshield, that's pretty obvious anyway, the answer is yes and i'm not giving up, this is STUCKY I swear, unapologetically written-in Deadpool cameo, we love sharon carter, wow look at the tags am i losing my mind, you'll see - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-01-05 09:37:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 36,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18363386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andathousandyearsmore/pseuds/andathousandyearsmore
Summary: "What's it about?" Steve asks, gesturing to the book she's reading."I don't know," Wanda honestly answers, even though she's halfway through the book already.He stops, and looks at her like he said trying to figure something out. "You... don't know?"Wanda glares at him over the top of her book. "Read this and tell me you understand what is happening." She knows he's not going to be able to get it anymore than she will."I'm guessing it's about catch-22s?" Steve asks slyly, a stupid smirk on his face. He says it very proudly, as if the title of the book isn't Catch-22.Wanda glares at him again. "I would have never guessed."Steve laughs. "A catch-22 is a phrase that people use whenever they're talking about impossible dilemmas." He blinks. "Kind of, I think.""Oh," she says, understanding why he sounded so proud. She wonders if the phrase came from the book or if the book came from the phrase.He winks. Wanda glares for the third time. He rolls his eyes. Wanda huffs a sigh."Okay," he slowly says, walking away from her.Some days, she wonders how this man is full of steel edges and ice while also being America's pretty boy, sunshine incarnate.





	1. stubbornness and vanity

**Author's Note:**

> for xander and will, because you've finally gotten together and helped me win _that_ bet
> 
> i know it's shorter than what i promised; i am very sorry for what it's worth, please don't send selli after me (or worse, _laney_ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter playlist:
> 
> Bad Things by MGM ft. Camila Cabello  
> I Don't Want To Live Forever by ZAYN ft. Taylor Swift

 

## Chapter One

#### stubbornness and vanity

She's not always trusted in this world, and she's not always liked, either. People don't want to be around someone that can read their mind, or someone who can manipulate reality. It's very clear that no one wants her to manipulate their minds or accidentally lose control of herself, and so they stay away. There's no blaming them. If she could stay away from herself, she thinks she would, but then who would be in charge of controlling the monster our power within?

There are a few people who don't, and they interact with her in various capacities. Dr. Banner (he earned seven PhDs, she might as well give him the courtesy despite what he says) is friendly enough, and she thinks that both of them know something about trying to control their inner selves. They talk about life, biology, tea (she loves tea) and if she ever wants to finish school. They've come to the conclusion that it should be on her horizon... if she feels good enough about managing herself. She feels incredibly guilty about showing him his worst nightmare, and thinks he forgave her too easily. Clint is very friendly, and although on certain days he'll avoid her—days where he projects these memories of former brainwashing and mind controlling—most days he's almost like a fatherly figure, though he'll deny it to his death. He is the one to ask her how she's adjusting to life here, and the one to give her advice when she wants to do nothing but scream and cry. Captain Rogers—Steve—might be the kindest out of them, and he is an open book all the time. He wasn't scared or cautious of her at the beginning, and he isn't like that now. He never projects caution or worry that she'll read him whenever he is near her. In fact, his mind is the freest to look through, and she thinks he doesn't care one way or another what she does. But this is trust that should not be abused, and so she teaches him how to employ mental mind blocks so that she can't read him. It's good for her too, because his open emotions and aura sometimes makes it distracting on her to focus, so this (she hopes) might keep some overwhelming emotions away. 

Vision is a mystery who is trying to figure out life for himself, and so he's wary and trusting of everything and everyone simultaneously. He's a paradox, yes. She understands why Natasha, a spy with decades of secrets, is wary of her. Some people's worst nightmares are worse than others, and watching Natasha go through hers was a very painful experience. Similarly, Stark's was saddening, and she knows now that she spent many years hating and blaming the wrong person. Though now she also realizes that deep down, she's always known this, but chose to elect Stark as a figurehead for all of her hate to strike through. Sam Wilson is an interesting character, and it's clear that he wants to be friends with her, but neither of them are in the same places at the same times. The same applies to Thor, but she doesn't think he knows much about her since he isn't here. Steve's friend, James, is deliberately kept away from her; she knows this even if no one will admit it, and there's several dozen reasons why that is a good idea. 

These days, there's very few people left for her, no matter what it seems like. There's a hole left in her that will never be fixed, not until he wakes up from the Regenerative Cradle that everyone seems to have faith in. She hopes that it will work, because she does not know what she is going to do if it doesn't. Without the other half of her soul, how does anyone expect her to survive her life not as a wandering ghost? He is the only thing she has fully left, no matter how kind, friendly, and open some of the others may try to be to her. 

(She hears Stark mention to Steve something about codependency—not in relation to her and Pietro; how could Stark possibly even know?—and wonders if this _does_ apply to the two of them, who have _needed_ to be like one. Even if this is unhealthy behavior.)

There is a set role for her on this team as a trainee Avengers with powers and she is fine with that. It is for the best, anyway, because many of the others probably wouldn't even look at her for what she has done to them without this. Thor, Dr. Banner, Natasha, Stark, and Steve: she has shown them their worst nightmares and she doesn't think she'll ever forget the prince's failure, the monster's destruction, the assassin's past, the billionaire's loss, or worst of all, the captain's reality. These are their fears, so vulnerably shown to them on that day. It would be fascinating, if her actions weren't so horrifying, to know why the one she controlled the worst (Stark is a close, close, _close_ second) nightmare is also the most open with her, and the most carefree. At least Tony has the good sense to try and avoid her sometimes or even try to put up mind blocks, though they don't work. Steve doesn't, but she knows he isn't an idiot, or unaware of the danger she can do. She thinks it's him, and partially Natasha, who keep James away from her. So why doesn't Steve keep himself away from her? She doesn't understand why the captain is the only one who doesn't in some way treat her as a trainee Avenger, and why he thinks he can let all of his guards drop. 

Pietro would know. Out of the two of them, Pietro is the one with people skills. Back in Sokovia, after all, he was the one with a part time job convincing people to buy things (she doesn't know the proper English word) while he wasn't being a charming piano player, and she was the one with a job doing figures for the people that needed them done and an additional copying job. Of course, he didn't use these skills for anything else other than sleeping around, but Pietro still _has_ them. So yes, she has another reason on her long, _long_ list on why she wants him here by her side.

She meets various people who are honorary members of the team, or adjacent to it as the days pass on. Maria Hill, Pepper Potts, Dr. Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, Sharon Carter, Colonel James Rhodes (and not War Machine this time), Nick Fury (technically), Laura Barton, Cooper, Lila, Nathaniel (whose middle name _did not make her cry_ ), and Happy Hogan. They are all wise people as well, and treat her with a little caution. Sometimes there's a little pang of distrust she feels, especially from the spies, which is completely understandable and probably warranted. All of these people, although some of them are much more friendlier and brighter than others, are also not fully open. It is quite literally just Steve who could not care any less if his thoughts are projected or not. 

He bleeds with emotion that always wars with itself. Happiness is always blended with anguish and melancholy is an almost ever-present state in his mind. It is a strange place, she thinks, to be inside his mind. She would not like to be him at all. There is the heartache she feels because she is missing Pietro, and there is the heartache he feels because he is missing so many things at once. Grief, she knows, takes on many forms, and his grief weeps silently as he covers it with a smile and warmth. It is strange that for all he hides it from everyone, he doesn't take any measure to hide it from her unless she can't take it anymore and asks for him to put mind walls up. Everything he feels is vibrant, no matter what it is, and no one else has even a _fraction_ of the intensity he does. She blames the serum. Probably.

She doesn't know how to tell any of them that no, she doesn't read their minds or even their auras because she's spending all her time trying to wade through Steve's. Maybe he notices, maybe he doesn't, but Steve is usually the person she tries to test her powers on. Not him directly, but his aura. She sometimes tries to feel it even when she is no longer near him, and finds that she can detect his presence from one mile if she concentrates. Sometimes she tries to calm the vibrancy down herself, though she can't tell if it works. Other times, she tries to influence his aura by feeding warm thoughts, especially when she can feel a lot of pain. This, too, is one she doesn't know is a success or failure. 

At least, not until Steve comes to her one days and asks to talk to her about her powers. She immediately thinks that this is the day the grace period isn't over, and that he will start to treat her like nothing but a trainee Avenger. Of course, she is wrong. So, so wrong. 

“Wanda?” Steve asks hesitantly as he plops down on the couch opposite to her, barely sitting on it with the way he's leaning forwards and hunched. “Are you busy right now?”

She blinks, putting down the book she is reading. She's barely begun it, and all she knows is that it's something to do with a man who had been sitting for a portrait and expressing his desire to remain forever youthful. Or something like that. “Is anything the matter?”

“No, no,” he says, shaking his head. “I was just wondering if I could talk to you about something to do with your powers?”

She merely nods with a confused face. 

“Um, sometimes I'll feel tugs of energy, or sometimes I'll feel a rush of warmth or peace in extremely random times and I think that maybe your powers are, um... it's not me, directly, but something connected to me that is uh, tugged. I was wondering if this was a...” He blushes and fumbles through it, and it's easy to see why. It's not exactly a nice thing to accuse someone of tampering with their emotions. 

“It is not a side effect,” she delicately says, “Sometimes, when I do not want to bother you, I will feed your aura warm or peaceful thoughts so that it will not bleed as strongly and you will not have to constantly put up blocks.” She pauses, and realizes that sounds rude. “Um, I-I can stop? I didn't realize you actually felt it too and it's more of a convenience thing for me but maybe it isn't nice for you and—”

“It's fine,” Steve shrugs off. “I just wanted to make sure you knew and that it wasn't something out of your reach. Um... but the tugs?”

Wanda pales slightly. “Um... sometimes I feel curious on how far I can feel a person's aura and I had not... does it really tug?” 

He laughs randomly, a joke she doesn't understand but can feel to be a reminiscent memory, and the colour returns to her face. “A little,” he admits with a smile, now that the awkwardness is over on his end. “But... just keep it to me, yeah? I know it's just our... auras, but I don't think anyone else will be particularly happy if they feel anything. It's something only you can feel, mostly, I know, but I think they need some time to figure that out.”

She frowns at him. “Maybe you should take that time, too. Why do you trust me so easily? It is not as easy—”

“It never is,” Steve interrupts, looking at her gently. The amount of sympathy and acceptance pouring off of him makes her wonder just _why_ he is like this. “Wanda, it _never_ is as easy as it should be.”

“Then why do you let me tug your aura or leave yourself so open?”

He looks at her with a wistfulness and a melancholy that is clouding over him, and she knows he's swamped in memories right now. “Some people tell me it's my fatal flaw; excessive loyalty. But you know what? I don't... I'm not the kind of guy who trusts people easy anymore, even if I was before. Been stabbed a few times too many to trust so _openly_.” He gives her a slightly bitter smile, and for the first time, she can feel an icy steel underlying his entire persona, strong enough that she wonders why she's missed it. 

For the first time as well, she can understand part of why he is so open. He trusts her, unquestioningly, because he knows that if that trust is ever broken, he'll walk away more or less fine at the end of the day, but she won't. All this time, she's been thinking of the consequences to him, but not once has she considered the consequences to her own self. The vision, the emotions... it all makes sense now. Why when she had apologized for the vision, he had brushed it off like it was nothing and had really meant it. Worst nightmare or not, Steve knew himself and his limits frighteningly well, even if he didn't stay within them. Nevertheless, if someone else toes his limits, well, the past is just as good as an indicative as anything of what Steve can do. He has his confidence and a promise of wrath (and revenge?) to back him up if need be. She's starting to see not a man of virtue, American values, and brightness, but a man who has been hardened by sacrifice, compromise, and efficiency. 

She looks down and away from him. “You know,” she quietly starts off, “A different man would already consider his trust to be broken.”

When she looks back at him again, it's evident he knows that she has figured it out. There's a careful smile in his voice, as he says, “Maybe. But if I held every small thing someone has done against them, SHIELD would have fallen much, much earlier than it did.”

“Maybe it should have,” she bluntly says, because there's another side to this story that she just can't figure out. There is no way that someone this wary and this sharp has the ability to let go and even need to use backup plans of revenge as comfort. There's also no way they can hide it so well like he does. Especially from her.

He smirks, and there is absolutely no trace of the hesitant, blushing man that had initially approached her. “Maybe your insistence is exactly why I don't run away.”

He gets up from the couch and starts to walk out, and she watches him go. Midway to the entrance, though, he stops and turns around to look at her. 

“Wanda,” he says, pronouncing it like he's saying it for the first time and trying it on for size. Steve grins just like Pietro does whenever he cons someone into doing something they shouldn't have, full of fixed determination and knowledge that the game's been won before the other person has started. “After all, my fatal flaw has and will always be _stubbornness_.” Then he goes, for good. 

He leaves her to her book, but now she can't focus on it. She wonders if this conversation was to sate his curiosity (and part of hers), or for something else. Had it been a warning, or a threat? Had his words been a promise? 

She sighs. This book, veiled thinly about hedonistic pleasures and the dangers of such, has lost her interest for now. She'll have to come back to it another day, and perhaps this author. Although she's been having to reread sections repeatedly to let the content sink in, which still isn't happening, the writing style of this author has captured her. She also wants to know why this man's painting seems to carry an important weight to it. Later, when she does not have this distraction, she'll find out. 

Later turns out to be five days after, when she's curled up on a sofa with the book and attempting to start it again. She is at the section where the main character has met his love interest, a talented young actress who falls head over heels for him. She notes with curiosity how the love interest met the main character in a manner relating to his hedonistic ways, introduced to him by a friend from nobility. And yet the love interest doesn't seem to care, or pay attention to that. As the pages flip by, and the love's acting ability diminishes because of her infatuation with the main character, she starts to frown at the idiocy of it. 

And of course, this is when Steve walks past her and decides to talk to her. 

"Hey," he merely greets, seemingly in a good mood. He has his mental walls up this time. "What are you reading?" 

She lifts up her book to show him the title of it, not knowing what else to say instead. 

"Is that a book on art history or art?" Steve asks, having managed to catch the title of it. Curse the super-soldier serum. "Or a specific painting?" 

"No," she says, because of course that is exactly what he would jump to, being an artist and all. She would mock him for it, but he actually has artistic talent and knows a lot about art. "It's a fictional story." 

"Oh," he says. Then Steve sits down on the seat opposite to her sofa and she immediately flashes back to last time. But he doesn't say anything; he merely pulls his phone out and starts typing, not even paying attention to her. She's thankful; this book has begun to be interesting. 

Time flies by and she's now reading about the breakup, and the main character's wish coming true about his painting. She wonders if the main character had somehow sold his soul to achieve a trick like that. And she reflects on the world around her, and thinks, _hmm, maybe not too unrealistic, even if it supposed to be fictional_. 

"Oh," she hears Steve say again, though he's still staring at his screen in surprise. Barely a second later, his walls drops and she is hit with a barrage of emotion. Steve must have put his blocks up because he was very happy, she realizes, but now that something has caught him off-balance, they've come tumbling back down. 

"Steve," she calls out. "Walls." 

He blinks at her, alarmed, and then she everything she feels of him disappears. Good. He's learning how to do it more efficiently and effectively. Sooner or later, she can teach probably teach everyone else how to do the trick as well, and have full confidence that it will work. Best of all, she'll have Steve to back her up. 

"Wow," he says, looking at her book with a still surprised expression. "That's a story alright." 

She tries to muster up her most threatening look and voice. "Spoil any of it and I will skin you alive." She's not really sure where that came from, but whatever, it works. Steve pretends to be cowed, anyway. Both of them know that she can make worse threats and actually have the capacity to carry them out, but it's fine. 

He laughs after a few seconds though. "I know the feeling, don't worry." Then he stares at the book and lets out a quiet _wow_ , before going back to his phone. And that's the end of that. 

Or so she thinks. She's wrong; incredibly wrong like last time. 

Just a few minutes later, both of them are joined by Natasha, an incredibly rare thing in her own experience. Natasha tends to avoid her with all the subtlety of Tony's public persona, even if she is a spy. The assassin, she knows, thinks that Steve is an idiotic fool for letting himself be around her and for interacting with her on an almost daily basis when he's here. She's heard one of Natasha and Steve's conversations on accident once before, and out of that she _also_ knows that Barnes only remembers barely half of his and Steve's previous lives. It's something that is causing Steve a little distress, if the energy he was pulsing out at the time was any indication, but she doesn't bring it up. She wasn't supposed to listen, anyway. 

Natasha immediately spots her and then gives Steve an accusing look sharp enough that she wonders how he doesn't even flinch. 

Steve merely says, "She has the same taste in books as you do," and then goes back to reading and typing something on his phone. He's completely oblivious to the dirty look that Natasha shoots him, and the litany of Russian swears that Natasha sends his way. She can't help it; she laughs, completely understanding what Natasha was saying. She doesn't think she's ever heard anyone call another person a _walking, talking, punching bag full of shitty music, hot air and fucking stupid idiocy_. Or something close enough to that effect. 

" _Something we can agree on_ ," she says in Russian, much to Natasha's surprise. What can she say? Slavic languages (and Russian) have always come easy to her. 

" _The two of you know that I can understand you, right?_ " Steve mumbles, not bothering to look up from his phone like a proper teenager. Which he is not, and nowhere near being. Natasha blinks angrily at him, and it's apparent that Steve had held out this particular detail about himself. 

" _Sokovian is not so different from Russian_ ," she says, trying to justify herself. " _I don't know about him, though_."

" _I_ _fo_ _ught in a damn war, you know_ ," Steve responds. So he's listening to the conversation, but not really paying all his attention to it. " _Pi_ _cked up a few things_." She thinks Steve is in serious danger from an angry Natasha.

" _And you never said a thing?_ " Natasha coldly asks. This was getting to be serious. " _Any others?_ "

" _A few_ ," Steve nonchalantly shrugs, completely unaware of his impending death in Natasha's hands. " _I am not telling you though, find out yourself, Natasha_. _I'll give you one if you act like a civilized human being though_." He pauses, flicking through something on his phone with interest. Steve's eyes widen for a second again, before he finally looks up from his phone and at Natasha. He still doesn't flinch. " _JARVIS and Bucky can't help you there, either and... FRIDAY. It's FRIDAY now._ " Steve curses softly underneath his breath, in English. 

"Not all of us are like you, Steve," Natasha says, switching their entire conversation back to English. 

She can't help but agree with the assassin again. "Steve, not everyone can _trust_ like you do." Steve's focus shifts directly onto her, sharp and piercing. Natasha's does too, and there's no chance she's missed her tone inflection on the word trust. 

Natasha's face shifts slightly, seemingly softening before it reverts back. Wanda can feel her aura radiating an air of choice, confusion, and realization. The anger is still burning hot, laced with memories of her painful past and just a small twinge of fear, but something cool is covering over it. 

Within seconds, Natasha sits next to Steve and manages to grab his phone from his hands before he can realize it. She slides it to the other end of the floor. He pouts at her childishly. 

"I was talking to S—" Steve starts to huff. 

Natasha glares at him. "I don't care." The assassin turns to her instead. "You can't read his mind right now. How?" 

She can't even begin to imagine how Natasha knows that. She doesn't want to think about it. 

"She taught me how to put walls up in my mind that she can't block through," Steve says, answering in lieu of her and making it sound so simple. She thanks him silently in her head, and then tugs a little at his wall to show it. He smiles. "Apparently I project too much for her not to get distracted, so she taught how to keep it to myself whenever it gets to be overwhelming for her. And even if you think it's a false story, all of it, Tasha, you can actually feel it. Wanda's attempts to go through the walls are something you can feel, to test it out." 

Natasha contemplates this in her mind, which is going bullet-speed. She can't even begin to sort through everything Natasha is projecting. It's getting to be overwhelming, really. 

"Stop," she says to Natasha, before a headache courses through her. "Can you just give me a minute to go a few floors down before you think?" It's a rude request, she knows, but what else is she supposed to do? She's already wincing. 

And just like that, all the rapid thoughts that are causing her stress process much slower, and only satisfaction rings out to her. 

"No," Natasha says. "Teach me." 

She hesitates. There still might be a few things that Steve and her haven't gotten right yet, which is why they haven't told anyone. But Natasha seems insistent, and she would really not like to be chained to the Black Widow's torture skills. 

"There's still a few things... I don't know if it's perfect yet," she tries to explain. "It took me this long for Steve and... I don't even know if it varies person to person." 

Natasha does the scariest thing after she says that. Natasha smirks. 

"Well," the assassin offers, "We can find out, right?" 

She really doesn't know what's inspired this 180 in Natasha's attitude. When she looks over to Steve, it appears that he doesn't either. He gapes, shocked at his friend and looks impressed. She doesn't know whether to fully trust Natasha or not with the sudden trick. 

“Don't think that this means you're off the hook for—” Steve starts to say, but he's cut off by her inadvertently dropping her book and hastily scrambling to pick it up, find the page and then close it.

"Steve," she interrupts. "Talk about the hook later, when neither of you are thinking so hard? Your walls are straining." 

Both of them turn to stare at her in astonishment. 

"Wanda," Steve slowly says, "That was Spanish."

It takes a second, but when she realizes that she understood Spanish, her eyes widen slightly. She doesn't know Spanish. She knows one word, and that is hello. Three, if she counts yes and no. None of those words happen to be what Steve had said. Which means that she must have some sort of a skill that helps her translate languages in her mind automatically, without her even realizing that there's been a language change. 

She carefully tables this thought for a different time, and tries to hide her excitement at this newly discovered skill. 

"Okay," she says as nonchalantly as she can, "It seems it was." 

"Did you know about this?" Steve asks, narrowing his eyes at her. So maybe she could pull off nonchalance well. Good to know for the future then. Being casual in the face of danger seems to be an Avenger move she hasn't quite mastered yet, but faking it might serve her just fine.

"It was either me understanding Spanish because of my powers, or you speaking Sokovian," she says, much more calmly than she felt. But as soon as she says it, it rings true in her mind.

" _Shit, just when it could not be any worse_ ," Natasha mutters in not-English, because she hears it in Sokovian. She doesn't ask what language that was and pretends that she couldn't hear Natasha talking to herself.

"Anyway," she starts to say, pulling them both on the track before Spanish veered them off course, "The mind walls?" 

Natasha frowns and gets up off the couch. "Not now."

As the assassin leaves, both Steve and her watch Natasha leave, sighing. Steve's is filled with disappointment and hers is filled with relief from being spared from Natasha's wrath if something went wrong. She doesn't want to do anything while Natasha still avoids her and has to be tricked into seeing her. Steve doesn't seem to agree though, he has an expression on his face that suggests that he wanted her to teach Natasha in order to build a foundation of their relationship. He doesn't realize (or care, whatever applies) that they've already built a foundation based on fears.

Nevertheless, she goes back to her book and he goes to retrieve his phone from where Natasha had tossed it. 

That is the end of that, and this time, she is correct in her belief. 

Eighteen days and eighteen years pass, both in reality and the story. Everything has changed in both spans of time. In her life, she's now much more closer with Tony (apparently she is a much better assistant when it comes to moving and lifting heavy machinery than he or his adorable little robots are because of her magic) and he's less wary of her. She has gotten to know Sam as well, and he is an extremely funny guy who she privately thinks is the only fully normal guy, because he is down-to-earth and real in a way that none of the others can capture because of their unique lives. Vision is trying to understand life the same she is (and also different) and together, they figure things out. She likes spending time with him. ~~Maybe a little too much~~.  ~~~~

It is only Natasha and James that she is no longer friendly with. But that is okay.

In the book, eighteen years have passed and the main character has fallen vice to all kinds of pleasures and sins, carnal and not. Her initial guess of hedonism comes true. The painting's role now is apparent; it records all the sins that he has committed and takes every sign of aging from him. The book describes the painting as an ugly, horrid thing that the main character experiments with, trying to find out which sins correspond with each altercation. His fascination with it is interesting in itself, because he is a narcissistic man who should be disgusted with his painting being sullied, and yet isn't. He wants to make it uglier, wants to discover more. Maybe it is because it doesn't affect his outside appearance and that is what truly matters to him. After all, the main character doesn't age; not when his painting does that for him. 

As she reads the scene where the painting's creator runs into the main character and wants to see the painting, she sees Steve standing in front of the mirror on the wall, running a hand through his hair and frowning at something. He seems to be looking for something in his hair, maybe a piece of fuzz or something? She doesn't know. She continues reading, and when the artist tells the main character that he has to pray for his sins—upon seeing his former masterpiece, now almost unrecognizable—she looks up again and sees Steve still standing there. There's a melancholic smile on his face, as he runs a  finger over the corners of his eyes, the corners of his mouth, between his brows and on his forehead. He traces his non-existent eye bags, pokes his soft cheeks, and then stops touching his face like it is strange to him. He sighs unpleasantly and then goes back to messing with his hair. 

It is strange to watch him fuss over his face like he is a seven year old when he is really nine more decades older than that. 

 _World's best looking nonagenarian_ , Tony always dryly remarks. _Less wrinkles and more glowing skin than me. He's got no wrinkles, actually, and the best prevention system._

She smiles and then continues reading. As she reads the story of the main character murdering the artist, blackmailing a friend to hide the body, and having the friend kill himself out of guilt, Steve comes and goes in random intervals. He's clearly doing things and tasks around the Compound, but occasionally he'll pause his walking and glance at himself in the mirror. She wonders what is so important that he has to walk through this room once an hour or so, but casual enough he can spare a few seconds to admire himself strangely. Maybe it is her fault for picking this popular area—it is in the middle of many of the Avengers rooms, common areas, and training grounds—but she is worried about him. It isn't like him to fall prey to vanity. 

"Steve?" she asks when Steve pauses for the fourth time. "Is everything okay?" She worries a little about him, especially after how shaken his aura was after the most recent mission in Rabat, Morocco. Something, she fears, had gotten to him then, and maybe its effects still linger.

He stops, turns and looks at her with an easy smile, his walls up. "Yeah," he readily says. "Of course. Just a little tired." He doesn't look tired, but then again, his serum works wonders for him. 

"You've been walking around here a lot," she points out, so she doesn't seem like she's worrying for no reason. 

He shrugs nonchalantly. "Yeah. I guess I never noticed how often I walk through here until today. First I had to track down Natasha at training and tell her to talk to a friend at Interpol, and then I remembered that today I promised Bruce to do yoga, which might be the only reason I'm put together right now. And then there was the call with Dr. Cho and Dr. Ross about a... uh... side project they've been working on for a year or so now, and now I have to yell at Tony to eat food on pain of Pepper before Bucky and I spar and... yeah. Sorry, I just dumped all of that on you for absolutely no reason." But he looks a little more relaxed, so she doesn't even mind. 

She tells him as much, and he merely laughs self-deprecatingly. 

"Thanks," he dryly says. He pauses for a second, looking at her curiously. "But Wanda, if you ever need something, don't hesitate to ask, okay?" 

"Okay," she says, lying just a little bit. She can see that he spots her words for what they are, a platitude, and he frowns, giving her a look that might have worked a few months ago, but not now. "Now go! Tony! Food!" 

He leaves. 

She reads all night, stopping only to eat dinner with Vision, who's been trying to learn how to cook. So far, he has a 50/50 success rate, which isn't half bad for someone who can't eat food and has no clue on how food even tastes. Vision hasn't ever eaten food, so she thinks that it's incredible he's doing better than some people who have taste buds and years of food knowledge. But she digresses. 

It's nearly eleven at night, and she's read about the opium den a few hours ago, which means she's currently reading about the death of the main character's former love interest's brother in an accident. The brother had been stalking the main interest in revenge for his sister's broken heart and subsequent death, causing the main character to fear for his safety, but that threat was now removed. 

She wonders how there will ever be a motivation for the main character to change now, since she thinks that this book is all about falling into, and then _out_ of, hedonism. So without a pressure point, how is the main ever supposed to fully change and reform? American stories are ever so fond of the redemption tale, so where is his? The book is nearly ending, surely the author cannot introduce something new now. That would be poor writing. She has heard good things about this book. 

Pausing her train of thought and resuming her reading, she doesn't even make it a single minute before something else captures her attention again. Steve, for the fifth time, has entered the room and is staring at himself in the mirror again, a frown set into his face. Her curiosity wants to make her get up and ask what he's doing with the mirror, but she's too polite to ignore the weary look on his face. 

Even though it is captivating, something is nagging the back of her mind, and she can't figure out what. And when she forces herself to keep her eyes on the page and not Steve in a stalking fashion, it only gets worse. 

Her mind immediately jumps to the irony that both Steve and the main character don't age, though because of vastly different reasons. Something must be wrong if she's associating her own life with this book, and she sets a bookmark in her book. She'll go to sleep and finish the story tomorrow, when she isn't tired and delusional. 

Or when she isn't sleep-deprived.

But then she looks at Steve desperately trying to find something in his face and hair, desperately trying to see himself in the mirror and then thinks about the main character's morbid fascination with his painting, and his morbid fascination with watching every change, trying to find them all. Delusional or not, her mind tries to link them together even though it doesn't make any sense. Steve is nothing like him, nothing at all, so why is she trying to think otherwise? She can't even wrap her brain around it, and the thought _disgusts_ her. 

She swallows heavily and stares at the book in her hands. The bookmark is taunting her, reminding her of the promise of tomorrow. Suddenly, she can't even look at it. Shoving it viciously in the back of the sofa, she gets up. 

The story has lost all of its appeal. Something feels off to her, and that book is at the heart of it. She is going to stay away from it. It's childish, and it's foolish, but looking at Steve and the bulge in the sofa, she knows she's not touching it. 

She's not going to finish it. 

She can't. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I seem to be writing stories in exchange for favors nowadays... I'm not sure if I'm proud of myself for the bartering, or oddly disappointed in myself. Well, at any rate, it's whatever. On the bright side, I do have most of this story written out so updates will actually happen in a timely fashion even though exams happen to be a miserable thing. 
> 
> Please do leave a comment on what you think!
> 
> love, m x


	2. sacrifice and loyalty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter two:  
> Lie To Me by 5SOS ft. Julia Michaels  
> Secret Love Song by Little Mix ft. Jason Derulo
> 
> also, yeah, I know what this chapter is called and I know the major character death tag is staring all of you in the face, but no worries! this chapter is death free and all good!!! but i feel like anyone really has a concern about said tag, i pretty much confirm details abt it in the tags?? idk. irdek.

 

## Chapter Two

#### sacrifice and loyalty

Her dreams are filled with blond hair in a mirror, streaks of white mixed gracefully in them, with weary smiles extending their help, losing a will to stay as time flies, with a clock ticking down, eerily reminiscent of a Cassandra in modern day, and with perfect paintings of broken men. She dreams of clever smirks, fiery blue eyes, non-existent laugh lines, sad frowns and wistful looks from a man who knows life and death as childhood friends, and who knows a childhood friend as life and death. She dreams of a man who devotes his life to a world full of consequences he's aware of, but does it anyway because he knows there's no one else to handle loss and betrayal like he can. Her dreams are filled with sins carried out by ageless hands and weapons of the men who have taken him under; which one is she dreaming of now? 

Morning washes over her thoughts and laps up last nigvht from her memories, leaving a sandy, foamy impression and nothing else. The water is something that has always fascinated her, but it does nothing to distract her from the disquieted, unsettled feeling coursing through her. Too late does she realize that she's actually shaking, and she slips as she climbs into her bathtub. It was a good idea, using real water (and not images in her brain) to calm herself, but now, as she's soaking in it, she finds that her mind has nothing else to focus on. 

It wanders, straight into the territory she doesn't want it to veer into. 

She wonders why her dreams focus on Steve, and all of the little pieces that make him up. They normally show her prophecies or send her messages about the future in an abstract, unclear manner. Before HYDRA fell, she saw crumbling hydras falling from the sky while a golden man watched as he bled out. Before Ultron, she dreamed of floating rocks and metal hearts. During Ultron, she saw beautiful images of dawn, spring, and red/white/blue. They've all come to pass. 

So them just showing her Steve, and not something related to an event has her worried. Life is trying to tell her something about him, and she just can't figure it out. Is it that he's not always as happy as he pretends to be and tried? Believe her, she knows all about that, since she can feel it whenever he doesn't have his walls up. His guards often slip around her too, like he's given up on hiding where he can't and letting her see things that others seem to miss. She wonders if it's intentional or not, and doesn't know which answer is more concerning. 

"Wanda," FRIDAY's voice chirps, a welcome distraction for her to snap out of her thoughts. "Captain Rogers is reminding everyone about the team meeting in the kitchen in ten minutes." She is grateful for the excuse to get out of her bathtub and do something other than get lost in her own head, but it is a little weird to see him right now. 

Nevertheless, she dutifully heads down to the kitchen after she gets dressed and smells the almond chocolate croissants. She realizes that's she's the last to arrive and only grabs one because she doesn't want to hold the meeting up. Making a silent promise to take another once Steve is done, she sits down next to Bruce. 

It is more than a little surprising to see Natasha and James sitting on the other side of Bruce, near her. Something has happened then, and something she needs to know about. 

"Okay," Steve says with a smile and his walls up. "Good, everyone's here." 

"You mentioned it a week ago. And four times yesterday. And ten minutes ago with FRIDAY's help," Clint dryly remarks. 

"Well, there's a few things," Steve shrugs, running a hand through his hair and ruffling it slightly. "I called this meeting today because I got a call last week from Dr. Cho concerning Pietro. She had said that by today, his heart and lungs should be fully mended, and by next week, they should be operational. And as of one in the morning for us, Pietro's heart and lungs are in fact, stitched back together with a little help. He's on track to making a full recovery in a few weeks." 

She already knew this; she had been there when Steve had taken the call with Dr. Cho. But to hear that he had actually made it, and that it wasn't just hopeful predictions... she starts crying a little. 

He was alive, alive, _alive_ and he could be walking and talking with her in a few weeks. She hadn't lost him to Ultron and dumb, disillusioned mistakes. He was going to be just fine. 

Alive. 

Steve breezes on, walking over to hand her a box of tissues and then walking back to where he was standing. "Dr. Foster says that the Avengers are going to be seeing Thor and four of his friends in a few months, which is also good news." His smile widens. 

" _Four_ of his friends?" Sam asks incredulously. "How are we going to have enough food?" 

Steve shakes his head with a smirk knowingly. He's already planned this out. "I have a plan, don't worry."

Tony leans over to her and fake whispers, "There goes my bank account." She laughs and wipes the last of her tears at that, safely placing the tissue box on the table behind her with her magic. She sees James stiffen in the corner of her eye and pretends she hadn't seen a thing. She also pretends not to see his hand move a little farther down his leg, presumably where weapons are hidden. 

"Your bank account won't lose a penny because of them," Steve jokingly promises, but the glint in his eye suggests that he is serious. She's intrigued. Unfortunately, he moves on, unaware that everyone _wants to know his idea_. "That's the last of the good news, I'm afraid, but this next thing isn't really good or bad I guess. I have updates from Talbot, Fury, Coulson, and Hill. SHIELD is running on its feet again, and the situation with the Inhumans is going, and that's all he said. Retirement is suiting Fury well, it seems. Coulson's team has something for Tony and Bruce to check out in a few days, because it's an 084 that's, well, apparently you'll find out soon, since it's funnily strange. The Accords, on the other hand, have no progress and yet no delays, according to Hill, but I guess that's good news because it give some time for the plan that Maria, Darcy and Pepper are working out." 

"That's a lot of good news," Bruce smiles at the end, raising his mug of tea in acknowledgement. "Especially about the Accords." 

"Yeah," Steve agrees, before ducking his head down bashfully, clearly having one last thing to say today, before he's done and she can finally get her other almond croissant. "It is. I'm glad that things are looking up for the team." 

That isn't a statement someone says in a vacuum of sunshine. That is—oh no. Oh no. She—as well as everyone else, judging by the concern floating around—straightens up and braces herself. 

"But?" Clint asks, having the bravery to say the unspoken question lingering in the room. It's thick and cloudy, looming over everyone's thoughts like algae on a fish tank's glass.

The expression on Steve's face drops and darkens, taking with it any hopes that the last piece of news is also good. 

"I'm taking a break from superheroing and the Avengers," Steve says, dropping the largest bombshell on them without barely any warning. This is nothing she could have ever expected, not when Steve is the center of the team and its beating heart. He breathes life into this team, nurtures that life, and watches over everyone like a completely justified father trying to help his depressed children. Steve invests his own heart and soul into the Avengers trying to save everyone else's, and without him, she wonders what will happen. "Indefinitely."  

The room stills, and there's too much shock and pain in the room for her not to to develop a migraine. She's going to need a pill or two after this. God, maybe three.

"You're leaving? You're leaving, like actually getting out and..." she hears Tony's softly spoken words, full of hurt. When she glances at her left, where he's sitting, Tony is trying not to show the feelings of betrayal and pain that he's feeling. "You're joking, right? You can't leave, this is your team! Why?"

Steve smiles sadly. "I know all of you are wondering how I'm saying it like it's not bad news or a bad reason why, but it's not-it's not anything bad. This isn't... this doesn't..." He pauses as he's trying to figure out what to say.

"This what, Steve?" Sam prompts. Sam sounds concerned, just like all of them feel. She can feel the worry and the stress that all of them are feeling, matching her own emotions. The room is filled with people trying to brace themselves, and she doesn't fault any of them.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that this isn't something that's been influenced by any of you, or something that's any of your faults. It's not, and I need you guys to know that, especially since I won't be there to tell you otherwise. Believe me when I say I've never met more people willing to shoulder guilt like a thousand Catholics than any of us. Just because I'm leaving doesn't mean it's on any of you. Okay? This is my choice, and I think, for a while, I need to make it because I don't know what else I'm going to do if I don't make it."

Natasha talks for the first time today, and her voice has nothing in it when she says, "That's not an answer, Steve." 

She thinks she has the answer to what Tony was asking. The rawness of the truth is ugly and vulnerable, and maybe that is why Steve has told them all that it isn't their fault, to spare them guilt if they ever figure it out. Her heart twists at that, at how he's still trying to do them a kindness when he's about to go. 

That is Steve in his essence, isn't it? Devoting himself to others and swimming in their oceans of their flaws trying to pull the shores together, fixing the cracks at the expense of burying himself. 

There's no one doing the same for him. No one breathing life into him, no one giving even a piece of their heart and soul to him, and no one helping him out just before the holes closed. Even though she knows he is tired sometimes, and not a perfect human, it's hard for even her to see just how far those cracks run when the man in question tries so hard to pretend they aren't there. Everyone has their own ghosts, and their own pasts that they're all trying to heal from, but there's no one quite like Steve, is there? He's had and lost, had and lost, had and lost over and over again that she wonders why he tries.

It's not quite the same question from before, of the days when she wondered why he trusted her, and yet it also is. Why does he let people in and take everything he has, even if they don't know they're doing it and even if they _know they're doing it_? Why does he leave himself open? Because this, this he can't come back from with a promise of wrath or revenge. This, she thinks, is something he can't come back from, not without help.

And the only people who can help him are the ones who have (and are going to again) hurt him.

Using her magic, she opens up a cabinet and floats a bottle of migraine pills. Her head is thinking too hard, and everyone else's bright emotions aren't helping. She can't manage it otherwise, not when she's still new to this.

"It wasn't meant to be one," Steve counters, and his eyes finally flicker over to James, before carefully looking away because of the pained look in his eyes. He doesn't look towards Natasha and James again after that. "It just isn't something any of you have done."

 _Oh_ , she thinks, _but it is what we haven't done, isn't it_?

"You know, something tells me that maybe—" Tony starts to say, before he stops talking thanks to her helpful and compulsory nudge. 

"When are you leaving?" Bruce calmly asks, maybe because he's the one most likely to get the feeling of needing to run. It doesn't mean that she can't feel the sadness coming from him too, but it does mean that on the outside, he respects Steve's choice and decisions. Probably the most, if the auras off everyone else are any kind of an indication. She puts up her own external blockers near James just so that she can stifle some of his projected emotions without him noticing anything. 

That is a kind of drama that she does not need, having the Winter Soldier think that she is trying to manipulate him as soon as Steve is gone. 

"Tonight, tomorrow, the day after; I don't know yet," Steve says noncommittally. She might hate him a little for how quickly he's sprung this up on them. "I'm going to D.C. today, though. I have to talk to Hill and a few retired Directors." 

Carter, Fury, and Coulson; or Margaret, Nicholas, and Phillip (Peggy, Nick, and Phil).

Does he mean all of them? If not, which one of the males is he not talking to? 

"Do you need to tell all of them, too?" Natasha asks, not unkindly, though she has a little fire behind her words. 

Steve shakes his head, actions much more confirming than words, and leans off of the couch he was standing against. Silently, he takes one of the last two remaining croissants, tosses the final one to her (she catches it with her energy bubble) and then walks out of the kitchen. Meeting over, that much is clear. 

She looks at the pastry in her hands and wonders if he is the mind reader, or her. It's striking how well he knows them all, and how well they all let him see. Maybe that's why he has to leave, a little bit for them as well as for him. It's not healthy for any of them, she realizes with a jolt, least of all him, to rely on someone so much or to be relied on without giving or taking back. 

 

\---------- **primum** \----------

\----------interlude----------

"You've come at a good day," the nurse leaving her room tells him with a smile. "She remembers everything today." 

Steve smiles in return, though his insides are crumbling and hollow, and takes the door that the nurse has so thoughtfully held open for him. He's very attractive, he thinks, and then banishes all thoughts that run in that path. This is not the time at all, and something must be wrong with him if he says thinking of sex at a time like this. 

He steps into the familiar care room, initially being greeted by the wooden wall covered with pictures, drawings, news articles and other clippings of Peggy's life. The light is just bright enough to illuminate the room and not give him a blinding headache like many other care rooms and hospital rooms. If he closes his eyes for a second, when Peggy isn't looking at him, he can smell the faint jasmine in the air and be taken back to the faint jasmine of her illegally-gotten perfume during the war. 

But she's looking at him, having heard him since the very beginning, and smirks at him just like she had all those decades ago. Like this, it's easy to think that they're both back in the war, and that she's lying in a hospital bed because a bullet wound has finally convinced her to go check it out. Her hair would be a beautiful brown and her lipstick would still be on, though a little less red from wear... not that anyone would tell her that. Everything is unsafe and he's worried about her, but she always laughed it off and tells him to find someone else to worry about. 

But things don't last, do they?

"Hey Peggy," he says instead, holding up the blueberry tarts that he had promised her last time. "Have I ever told you how much I love you?" Taking the chair next to her bedside, he sets them on the bedside table, also covered with a few photo frames and mementos.

She laughs, bright and clear, amused at that and then gives him a sharp look as she coughs a little. "What have you done now, Steve?" She knows him well, on the days that she remembers, and she may as well be the only one. 

He smiles, not faked like he has too often in the last few weeks, and tells her, "I'm leaving soon, Peggy. Soon enough." 

Her face remains the same, but her eyes, expressive when you know where to look for, give it away that she knows just exactly what has happened. "You've told them, then." She's playing along, pretending like she doesn't know how the encounter could have gone. 

"They're _my_ team, Peggy, it just doesn't feel right," Steve frowns, remembering all of their faces when he had said it. How close had he been to telling them that it was all a joke, and that he didn't mean it? How close had he been to going against all the plans he had? "They don't know any of it, yet. I can't do this, and yet... I can't stay." 

Peggy gives him a sympathetic look. "Oh, Steve," she sighs. "It wasn't right, what we did to you all those years ago. It should have been someone else, someone who wasn't as good as you are." 

"No," he says, looking at a picture on her nightstand. It had been a rare picture of him, Howard, Bucky, Gabe, Jim, Monty, Jacques, and Peggy all smiling at the camera. They had all been in the high of another crucial mission completed, and had all celebrated with a loud night in France. Several bottles of alcohol later, and several stolen items later, they were all still laughing. The smells of a city nightlife in France filled his head, cigar smoke coming to memory from the tobacco that Dernier had found. In that moment, the war had been in the backseat, and all of the them were laughing at another round of dirty jokes they were making in competition. Bucky and Peggy had put them all to shame, and with a particularly raucous one, they had all laughed hard enough to be thrown out of a bar. The picture had been taken when a photographer prowling the streets had found them and asked them to pose, not knowing who they were. Weeks later, when they found a news story with the picture printed, Colonel Phillips hadn't been too impressed. "I don't think I would have changed that. Any of that." 

“And that's why,” she sighs again, reaching out for his hand. She grips it hard, the steel behind it unchanged, and shakes her head a little sadly, “You were the perfect candidate and we shouldn't have. The serum was the desperate means to an end, and we should have picked someone who didn't have a—”

Steve knows what she's about to say; they've had this argument a few times now. He shakes his head, trying to stop her from blaming herself. God, what a sorry two they make, blaming themselves both for him and how the world has turned out. He normally would never dump Peggy into the sorry lot he belongs in, but this is the one circumstance he can. " _I_ didn't have a future until the serum. Painting dumb propaganda and being a rent boy was no way to live, and you know that. You've seen it. I would have died by some illness, something giving out, some VD, strong paint fumes, a stupid fight, or even maybe some kind of lynching. Something. Anything. Those were the days Bucky called me an angry little puppy, y'know. And besides, at the time, this was... well, based on everyone else, I was already doomed to hell." 

Peggy's face softens. She hasn't changed her mind, but neither has he. Her gaze wanders to another's photograph on her stand, one of her family. Steve catches her meaning and sighs in sync with her, but they sigh for different reasons. "I lived mine," she says. "You have to go and do what you can to live yours." 

Steve's heart twists at that, at what she's trying to tell him and what he knows. Both of them know that Steve isn't going to live his life like she thinks he deserves to. He gives her a tight smile that's threatening to break down any second, and the grip on his hand tightens. "I don't think I know to do that anymore, Peg. I'm in too deep to change everything and I-it's just... I can't." 

"Not without him?" Peggy guesses. 

"I can't tell him," Steve says, a little more sad and pained than he wants to sound, "I can't tell him and ruin our friendship. I just got him back, Peggy, and even that's shaky. How am I supposed to tell him that I've loved him since I've known what love is? He just looked so hurt this morning when I said I was leaving and... how am I supposed to tell him I loved, _love_ him so damn much that if he asked me to stay this morning, I would have?" 

Wasn't that the truth either, that if Bucky talked this morning and said something instead of looking sad, he would have stayed. He would have promised never to go, never to leave right there and then. Steve knew he would be lying and he still would have done it. 

Peggy merely smiles knowingly, sadly. "He might realize it one day, Steve."

"I'll be gone by then," Steve bitterly says, and then blinks at how angry he sounds at that. This wasn't what he had meant to say or do. "I'm a coward, I know, but I can't face him with something like that."

"He won't be thrilled to find you kept it from him, especially something like this," Peggy gently says, not unkindly. "Even if you aren't there to face it, do you want him to live with that knowledge alone? James may be a lot of things, especially now, but when faced with your absence, don't you think he'll find out?"

She's also known exactly where to strike him, too, now that he thinks about it.

"He's going to have to live with it alone anyway. Won't I make it worse if I'm there? I know he loves me back, he's never been subtle if he doesn't have—" Peggy snorts at that statement for how much it understates it, "—to be, but I don't know what else to do than play the oblivious and falsely straight man. The thing with Marcus, before, I thought they were going to catch on with how close I was playing it and maybe I wanted them to, but, playing straight is easier. They all think I'm blind and uninterested, and maybe Natasha's realized I'm not, but... I can't say yes, and be a no. It won't be fair." 

She's silent for a minute, thinking. Steve worries that maybe she's not thinking and actually losing lucidness. He feels awful for thinking that when she asks him, "Do you love him the same as you did before?"

"Peggy!" 

"Steve, answer me honestly." 

"He's always been the one for me, Peg. End of the line."

"That's not a yes, not a no."

"Yes."

"Nothing's changed?" He just _looks_ at her. "About what you feel, Steve, not anything else." 

"No." 

"You used to love other people, back then, even besides Bucky," Peggy keenly points out, "It might not have been the same, but you weren't also exactly chaste back then either." 

Steve doesn't think he likes where this is going all too well. "So you're telling me to find someone else?" He laughs like she's told a funny joke, and keeps talking with a bitter edge to his voice. "For what, so I can get over him? For him to get over me? I've _tried_  to get over him! Over and over again. And the last time I tried, just a week later, he tried to kill my boss and I went back to being a sixteen year old boy back in Brooklyn. I can't, Pegs, I just can't and it wouldn't be fair to the other person." 

"I know," she says, frowning again. "I'm just trying to have you admit what really bothering you up there." 

Steve slumps back in his seat, flickering his eyes closed with a simple gesture he knows never fails to be a little (or a lot) suggestive. He doesn't know why he does it to Peggy, except that he does: it never fails to make her laugh, because it is apparently so unsubtly subtle. Even now, he can hear her snickering.

After a few seconds of silence on his part, where he's trying to find the answer to her question, he finally finds himself calm enough—and by calm he means not close to be hysterical—to respond. "I'm not going to tell him unless he figures it out first, or someone else does and then tells him. Both of us know I'm not changing my mind on that. I'm leaving, though not you, and that's a fixed thing, too. But, I have to visit Dr. Cho and Dr. Ross to see if their progress with the serum is going. Otherwise... that's it." 

"And now if you stop pretending that you don't think with your emotions?" Peggy dryly asks. 

He opens one eye and then childishly sticks out his tongue at her, before closing his eye again and pouting... also childishly. "Well, that's a lot harder, now, isn't it?" 

"Now is not the time to retreat back into those sarcastic walls," she chides, and he just _knows_ she's rolling her eyes at him. "Not when you've almost cried just five minutes before, drama king."

"Aw, Peggy," Steve protests, clutching at his heart while opening his eyes and grinning. He doesn't feel like grinning with the way his heart aches, but they say to fake it until you make it, right?

\---------- **interlude** \----------

\-------------- **fin** \--------------

 

Tony is a paranoid man, she thinks, when everyone in the team hears him tell FRIDAY to alert them all if Steve sets a foot outside without saying a word. Later, when FRIDAY alerts everyone that Steve's leaving the Compound, she thinks that Tony's completely justified in his actions. 

So she—and presumably everyone else—rush down to the garage, where she sees that she's not the last one to arrive this time. Natasha and James have yet to arrive, but the second she spots Steve sitting on his bike with everyone around him, she senses the two assassins behind her. Vision, she knows, is with a few members of Coulson's team, and she wonders if he had gotten a proper goodbye beforehand. Or if he even knew about Steve leaving, considering that he had left before Steve had told them all. Thor didn't know, after all; he was on Asgard. 

"I wasn't going to leave without saying something," Steve is protesting to a betrayed Tony. "I was sitting on my bike waiting for all of you! Did you really think I'd try to run away like that, especially since I knew FRIDAY was going to alert everyone?" 

"You're running away now," Tony harshly accuses, sharp enough that they all wince. Steve though, he looks mostly unaffected, but she can feel a few cracks from his carefully constructed mental walls. "From this entire team and you won't even tell us why. For all that we know, maybe it is something about us with how much you're denying it. Don't give me that face, Steve. If you're going to deny it, stay." 

" _He's right_ ," she says in Russian, standing next to Tony and trying to radiate a sense of calm from herself that will have to be forced to merge with Tony's frantic energy. " _It is us, isn't it? Just not in the way anyone thinks_." 

Steve's eyes flick over to her, full of sadness and yet, approval. " _Maybe not what you think either, Wanda. But maybe the stone has fallen into the pond with your throw_."  

She blinks at the Russian-Sokovian saying, wondering where the hell he had picked it up. She hopes he knows what it meant, because otherwise, it means that Tony was closer to the truth than she was, even though both weren't close. It's a little concerning, that she's spent time thinking about it and falling short of the mark anyway to someone who she can read open. 

"You know Russian?" Clint squawks. 

"He does," Natasha says, and she doesn't sound too amused at him. " _He_ also seems to forget he lives with super spies and geniuses who can track his every movement in the Compound." 

Steve doesn't even bother to protest when it comes to Natasha. He just gives in and apologizes. "Sorry, Nat." 

"Before anyone says anything," she interrupts, because she can already feel a migraine forming with everyone's auras and the tension in the room, "Can I just send out a pulse so I _can't_ feel what all of you are feeling at the same time?" She looks over to Tony and Steve, who nod, and then Sam, Clint and Bruce, who look wary but give their assent otherwise. Finally, when she turns to James and Natasha, who have always been the hardest to trust, they don't say anything. 

"Okay," James says quickly, and just a feel for his emotions tells her why. He's bleeding out just like Steve sometimes does when he isn't too happy, and probably aware of that. At his response, Natasha agrees too, very reluctantly. 

So she sends it out, white waves—she may be called the Scarlet Witch but her flair for the red is only because she likes to be dramatic and see her magic once in a while—cascading everyone in a second, before disappearing from everyone else's vision altogether. 

"It's finally worked!" Steve grins proudly at her, throwing down his walls to let her see the excitement he has. In that moment, she also realizes that her pulse block doesn't work on someone who already has their walls up. Steve quickly throws them back up though, and she smiles back gratefully. 

"Stay longer, see more tricks," she retorts back, because she's not afraid to play dirty, especially not with him.

He wrinkles his nose playfully at her, before loosening his expression up and shaking his with a quiet smile. "When I see you all on the news next time, I'll be sure to keep an eye for the tricks." 

"You know, I don't think you've told us where you're going," Sam suddenly says, looking at Steve with an accusing look. "Or anything about what you're going to do."

Steve merely smirks and looks at all of them. "I'm going to miss all of you, you know." He suddenly checks the time and then hops off of his bike. "But my time here is running out." 

Sam is the first one to pull Steve into a warm hug, telling him that he is an asshole who didn't answer the damn question. Clint does this elaborate handshake/fistbump thing with Steve that has both of them laughing at the end, when they went in for a 'bro hug'. Bruce, who is normally a little awkward at things like this, doesn't hesitate to hug back as Steve goes in for a hug. Tony pretends like he's too sophisticated for a goodbye when Steve offers him a handshake or a hug, but then changes his mind last minute for the hug, claiming that masculinity can go fuck itself. Just as soon as Tony lets go, she smiles. 

She sends Steve a vision of a popular restaurant in Sokovia and a happy memory of her entire family when they had the money to order the fanciest things on there once. As soon as the memory fades away, she hugs him, placing a quick kiss on his cheek. 

Natasha's cold façade crumbles a little when Steve offers her a hand, and she bats it away for a proper hug, holding on for longer than any of the others. "You better contact us, Rogers," is all she says when she lets go. 

Steve winks. "No promises, Romanoff," he breezily responds, though his face pretty much guarantees it. 

"Why not?" James asks stubbornly, looking at Steve with a blank expression. He's trying, Wanda can tell, to mask everything so well despite his decades of conditioning and the fact that she's mostly blocked off feeling their emotions. His, in this case, are strong enough to start to slip through her block. "Why can't you?" 

Steve's face falls. "Bucky..."

"You're leaving," James flatly says, staring at his best friend like Steve had personally stabbed him in the back. Steve flinches like he can't bear to see James look at him like that, with betrayal and anguish that's never been directed at him before. "Like it's the easiest thing in the world, and like none of us mean anything to you." 

"That's not tr—"

"Then what _is_?" James's voice breaks off almost imperceptibly, but no one misses it, not when there are spies and geniuses in the room, not to mention Steve—and he knows Bucky better than his hand. "Because I know you haven't run away from anything before. Why now? Is this the end of the line?" 

Stumbling back as if he has been punched in the gut, Steve looks at his best friend like a dying man stabbed in the heart. This is a reaction that doesn't make any sense; why did that phrase make him react like that? Eyes wide and face taken aback like she's never seen or even have hoped to guess before, he looks like he’s seen a ghost. Steve opens his mouth to say something, but nothing but air comes out.

“Steve?”

“No,” Steve breathes out, making a promise heavy with meaning and certainty,  though he sounds like all the air has been knocked out from him and he's struggling to breathe. It's not unlike a recovery from a horrifying nightmare, she thinks, and now she wonders what his worst nightmare would be now if she were to look. Steve definitely looks spooked; more so than before. "It's not and—”

"Sure feels like it," James says, and she realizes what he's doing. He's baiting Steve with this line that obviously is important to both of them and trying to get him to stay longer, to talk longer, to try and reveal things. And Steve, with his blind spot on, is falling for it faster than someone can fall in love at first sight. “Why can't you—”

Steve's eyes flash dark, and his walls come crashing down for a second, before Steve seemingly has to pull them back up. But that second has done enough damage; a wave of melancholic nostalgia, laced with regret slams into her just like one of Steve's punches and she almost stumbles back just like Steve has. But unlike her from this revelation, he doesn't hold onto the feeling long. He also doesn't let himself be baited for long, somehow managing to figure it out. A new emotion of weakness takes over though. 

He's looking at James desperately, anger disappearing and maybe not even have existing in the first place. She didn't feel it when he let go, so what was that dark look? Shaking his head pleadingly, Steve says quietly, "Don't say it. Don't say it, don't do it, I can't, please, just don't ask, I can't, I—” 

James blinks at this, at his best friend and everyone's friend, really, crumble like this for maybe the first time they've seen. "Steve?" 

Steve just pulls James into a tight hug, the movement fluid and natural enough that Wanda wonders if Steve's hugged him this tight and this close too many times, or if it's because it's James. In a way, it could be both. This hug is both the shortest and the longest one, because for all the seconds it took for Steve to let go, there's a lingering feeling of both of them wanting more in the air. "Don't ask me to stay," Steve whispers, though not because he wants to be quiet. Maybe it's all he can muster in that second. "I can't."

The tears in the corner of her eye are _not_ there. Really. They're not. 

Before James can say anything, Steve turns around and hops back on his bike. He forces a smile back onto his face like nothing just happened, but she notices it becomes a little more real as he looks at everyone else. He looks down at his watch and then back at them again. 

"I'll be back," Steve promises. He doesn't sound like it. She's not stifling her tears right now, of course not, there's nothing to stifle. 

"What if we don't take you back because you broke our hearts?" Tony asks, a teasing tone to his voice. Levity. That's the word that describes what he's doing. Because he's not sounding like he's holding back something either. Of course not.

Steve merely smirks knowingly, before breaking into a mischievous smile. Gone are any traces of weakness again, like he flipped a switch. "I'll just become a supervillain. Force you all to see me like that. Imagine the headlines; Denied Avenger Status: This Former-Superhero-Turned-Villain Is Heartbroken." 

"We can't have that happening," Sam dryly says, hiding a smile behind his words.

"Nah, it's fine," Clint shrugs. "Steve would be a bad supervillain anyway." He sounds like he's put some serious time and effort thinking into this, and she's not the only one who thinks so. 

"Have you thought about this before?" Bruce asks, looking like he doesn't know whether to laugh or scold. When Clint doesn't respond in five seconds, the physicist comments, "Seriously?" 

"Tony would be the best villain, and he would probably have the best tragic backstory too," Clint says with the air of a college professor giving a lecture. Only he can keep a straight face; even James looks like he's biting a smile back and losing.

"Revenge story, yeah? As for villainy, Bucky's been there, done that, so he's not doing it again. Same for Tasha and Wanda. Bruce is too nice and villainy goes against everything he stands for. Sam is the most well-adjusted and normal out of us, so he's not snapping anytime soon and saying fuck it. I'd be an okay villain, but I'm way too clumsy and also Laura, Cooper, Lila and probably even Nathan would not be happy. Thor's Thor; he has that going for him so he's not switching. Steve could be a criminal mastermind or a mob boss, yeah, but not a villain like Doom or Ultron. Not flashy or ego-y enough." 

Steve blinks at that. "Were those compliments or insults or both or... what?"

"Compliments," Clint seriously says. 

"Okay," Steve finally says, "I guess I now know my future is in the mob. Thanks, I guess." 

"You're welcome." A second passes, and then everyone bursts out in laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. Clint looks ridiculously proud of himself. "None of you knew what to say, oh my god, that was good!"

"Been there, done that," James repeats with a smirk. "Thanks Clint." The archer winks back. 

Steve checks his watch for the third time. "I will miss you all," he says, pausing. "I'll be back." He starts his bike and smiles. 

“You still haven't told—” Sam starts to say. 

"Check the news," Steve winks. "I'll be on it too. And if not my face, you'll know it's me." 

The team watches as he drives off, and as he looks back to smile and wave. In just another minute, he's gone from sight. 

Things are not going to be the same around here anymore, she knows, not until and  _if_ (yikes, _if_ is a scary thought) he comes back. Even then, things could still be different. 

Very different. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... does Steve come back? i really could not tell you, does he?  
> (cut to me hastily rewriting next scene based on how much angst i want to inflict)


	3. difference and change

 

## Chapter Three

#### difference and change

Two days pass, and Steve has dropped off the grid, vanishing without a single trace. They trace his bike all the way to a diner in Brooklyn (and Tony grumps about how of course it's Brooklyn) and the footage lines up perfectly to it as well. Steve takes his bag inside the diner and then never comes back out again, not in a manner that any of the outside surveillance cameras can catch. And when Tony and Clint go to the diner to ask around for Steve, apparently all they're met with is a confused Hispanic family who liked the blonde man who tipped well, but didn't really remember anything else. 

"This is Steve," Natasha hisses when they come back, "How could we have lost the least conspicuous man out there?" 

She just thinks that Natasha takes personal offense to how Steve had winked at one of the surrounding cameras before he had gone inside. Steve knew what he was doing, yes, and he was being a perfect example of an asshole in a field which he was supposed to know little about. This is Steve flaunting it while also telling them all that he means it when he's taking a break. Knowing how through and meticulous he's about it, it's probably going to turn out that they won't find him until he wants to be found.

Much like, she thinks, the same situation with James.  

Another two days pass, and FRIDAY's search for social media spotting turns up with an entire new account, already full of pictures from D.C. and Arlington. It's called **captainrogersneighborhood** and the title is just so quintessentially _Steve_ that it has all of them smiling, and not even since it gives them a clue on where he is. They think that this is what he had meant by knowing that this is him. The pictures, their style, and the one post of a sketch of James the day after pretty much cinches it. So this is how he plans to communicate in the beginning. It's better than nothing. 

Tony posts the instagram feed on his own profile, giving a shout-out, and suddenly Cap-spotting has become a thing, even if no one knows where he is. Cap's account is easily one of the most well-liked accounts, but it's clear that he has his location pictures on a timer, because they come like clockwork and they are popular destinations. Usually, if he posts a picture, he is out of that location already. It takes the public a little longer to figure that out, and so they're have also made a guessing game out of it. Steve doesn't ever discourage it or post anything other than his pictures, and neither do the Avengers. 

He varies up where he's doing it from, too. She thinks he borrows phones or uses a lot of public computer knowledge to do it. It's all very careful, methodically and meticulously planned out, but one slipup and the Avengers (and the public) will know everything that matters. Just one slip, but she doesn't think it will happen with how precise everything is being handled. Steve is too good for that, much to the chagrin of the Avengers. 

Clint was right. Steve would make for an incredible mob boss or criminal mastermind if he so chooses. It is a scary thought, and one she keeps in the back of her mind. Steve would also make for a bad enemy to have. Without Captain America's public image, there is nothing stopping Steve from carrying out stealth plans to eradicate villainy or become one himself. God knows that Steve would probably be far less stressed and pressured there (and far more successful).

As it turns out though, Steve doesn't make an attempt to directly contact them, and doesn't respond to DMs or anything. 

Coulson's team drops in for a few days, handing off some foreign object to Tony and Bruce that keeps them entertained for a few days. Just like Steve had said they would. It's a little strange to see that Steve's disappearance hasn't really made an effect on anyone but them. The world runs, intelligence operations run, missions run, and everything is on plan. Even the stupid object. She hates it, by the way, because she can sense an overwhelming feeling of terror from it and it's messing with her. No one else can feel it, and she's sure Natasha thinks her crazy. As do Coulson's team, probably. They get along with her just as spies tend to do, which is to say not very much and with a degree of caution. The scientists look at her with a professional wonder that she does not appreciate, because she isn't an object. Or a tool. Not anymore. But the hacker, Skye, becomes friendly to her, and maybe even sympathetic (which is strange since Skye seems to be powerless but also not strange given the mystery and sadness radiating from her), and the time they spend is punctuated with Skye giving her a phone number to contact. 

Skye says to call whenever they need some help out in the hacking department, or for intel on the hacking department. As a former member of the Rising Tide, Skye had winked as she had told her this, she has connections that not even Tony Stark can manage. Tony would probably take offense to that, but even so she takes the offer for help. It's an appreciated help, and it is something they need from any direction, now that Steve has gone. 

Even when they're called out to Boston to fight, there's nothing on his end. And the news had been televised everywhere due to how strange it was. After all, aliens with a propensity to spew purple fire, or something similar to purple fire since it wasn't quite fire, make headlines and good stories. Unfortunately, they also make for property damage, which leads to televised interviews, PR events, and public fundraising to make good. Never mind that they saved Boston and its important history.

Later, they'll realize he was in Hollywood, marveling the sign just as much as any tourist would. It seems as Captain America makes for a shameless tourist like anyone else at his slight gushing. There are numerous comments that say the same thing, more or less, on his pictures. Even if they are more artfully taken than the average person (like herself). 

Week three of silence pops up on them like ghost with a perchance for scaring people childishly. 

He's in London and they're all at the Tower faced with questions from the media on if Steve has retired. He's taking pictures with the Big Ben and spreading the love to Buckingham Palace and St. James Park, while they're faced with the UN furious that Steve is taking a break from the Avengers, unannounced. Then, it's official. They _have_ to try and find Steve in order to keep their peace with the UN and the world. The word "vigilantes" pop up more than a few times during the UN meeting, because they believe that "superheroes cannot take unsanctioned breaks whenever they feel like it, because it is akin to employees taking random breaks which get them fired" and that superheroes who run away "disobey the UN", making them vigilantes. 

They all know what the UN thinks of vigilantes. They all know what the UN wants to do if there are too many vigilantes. 

The Accords lurk on the horizon (and had also been the initial warning that had gotten the Avengers to have an unofficial/official agreement with the UN) and that would put all of them at the UN's whim. More so than currently. So, to avoid that, they have no choice but to take the job and make it seem like they wholeheartedly agree. 

It's a job that all of them simultaneously put every effort into, and absolutely no effort into. As much as Steve has left unexpectedly and dropped off the grid (in his own weird way), upsetting them all, he's also not deserving of their scorn and the punishment that will undoubtedly come. She thinks that this attitude the Avengers hold might change as the days pass and there's still silence, but it will keep for now. Loyalty runs high in the Avengers once you're in. Any of them would die for each other, she realizes, without a moment's notice or blink. 

Loyalty inspired by Steve, she thinks, and then she feels a little bittersweet. 

It doesn't last long, because with week four brings about her brother, and now her entire world has changed. Her brother is here, with her once more, and she cannot seem to contain the cheer that fills with her. 

Pietro. Here. Alive. _Safe_.

She has dreamed of this day. She has dreamed of this day so often that she's cannot believe it's happening. She can't believe that Pietro is by her side, and so she doesn't let go of him for a while.

" _I woke up once, before_ ," he tells her that night when he comes back and she asks why he is not surprised that he has woken up months into the future, a future so different. She knows she would be losing her mind completely. Steve, when they hadn't talked about it before, had said it was scary to lose even a day of life. " _I was not supposed to, and Dr. Cho was trying to fix the Cradle so I could sleep. Maybe a week ago_?" 

" _In Seoul_?" she asks, slipping into her Sokovian comfortably, as he is talking to her in it. She misses talking with someone else in her native tongue so much. " _How—Dr. Cho did not tell us this, she did not mention anything at all_!"

 _"Their—your beloved Captain was already there,"_ Pietro says, a-not-entirely-bitter smile on his face as he seems to remember _. "It was painful, lying there and I could feel my bones trying to heal. I panicked, at the start, because I couldn't see any of you and I wondered... but he, the Captain, showed up and had the nerve to apologize to me. But, he also gently told me that it was a few months later and told me everything that happened. You, the team, the defeat, the chance to live at the Tower, all of it. He didn't fully soften his words, but he told me he knew what it was like to lose time. I think he did to me what he wished someone did to him, because when I asked what his experience was like, it was saddening. He said that it was a little frustrating, being a little lost and having to deal with a world moving on without you, but that the process was easier with others supporting you. He told me to try and trust the Avengers, and whoever else I wished to have in my life, even if it didn't come easy. All of the Avengers._ _"_

" _About Stark_ ," she starts to say, but he waves her words away. 

" _I know_ ," he says, lips pressed in a thin smile that is also not bitter or cold, but not warm either. " _The Captain said as much when he started talking about the Avengers and things to know if I ever wanted to join. He seemed to think that I might not want to fight anymore, as if I had a genuine choice in not doing what you do here_." 

She laughs brightly at that, maybe for the first time since Steve has left. 

" _Where is the Captain, anyway? Isn't he the one that runs the team_?" Pietro asks, disappearing to look around, and then sitting down next to her again. 

" _There are another few things you have missed_ ," she says, and then tells him. There is and isn't much to say. He listens to it all, and then listens to what she has been doing with a patience that has never before been seen from him. It would be a little concerning, had it not been for the fact that Steve had said this would be normal. Pietro is only listening because he has lost time and wants to make it up. And Steve would know all about this. 

"Oh," is the only thing he has to say, in English, and that is all the talk about together without the group. 

Pietro fits much more quickly within the group, and he's not so warily regarded as she still is by people like Natasha and James. Though maybe Bruce stays away at the beginning from Pietro, it takes days for him to warm up to her brother, and that is that. She's glad that Pietro knows his way inside and outside the team. Like she's always said, he's the one with people skills. 

" _Why do James and Natasha not like you much_?" Pietro asks, in Sokovian. " _They avoid you, why_?"

" _They don't like my powers. Natasha is the best spy out there, with secrets, end of story, and James has had decades of people playing games with his mind_ ," she simply says. " _I understand_." 

" _They understand that you will not use them, right? They trust you not to go through their minds_?" Pietro asks concernedly, not letting this go like a normal person. The two of them, her and Pietro, have never been normal, she belatedly thinks.

"No," she says, in English because she does not wish to talk about this much and English has always been how they end things. "They do not." 

"Are they not your teammates? Should they not have the b—" he starts to respond fiercely, in English, not giving a care. 

"Pietro," she sighs, picking up _12 Years A Slave,_ which is that book that inspired the movie with the man who looks all too similar to Dr. Strange, one of Pietro's initial surgeons who got all the bullet wounds out. She's almost done with it, and although she knows that this is written by a man who's has experience all of it, which means he has come out of it good, she can't help but worry for him. "It takes time for trust, okay? Let them live." 

He doesn't look happy about it, and she sighs again. He's probably going to attempt something.

They are all at movie night, on Wednesday now, not Thursday, where Clint's movie idea has been shot down like it has been for a while. Clint grumbles and says that his ideas had always worked out when they had movie night on Thursday, and not Wednesday. He also says that he's going to wear everyone out one of these days. 

"That's because Steve would entertain your dumb ideas," Natasha rolls her eyes just as Tony says, "Yeah, well, blame the UN for the change." 

"I fucking will," Clint grouses, and his face is pulled just enough that it makes all of them laugh uncontrollably. The image of Clint yelling or scaring the shit out of UN officials over movie night is too funny _not_ to laugh at. It's made funnier by the fact that it sounds completely like something he would do. 

Bruce looks at her book and then asks, "Hey, isn't that a movie?" 

So they end up watching 12 Years A Slave, and she smugly smiles when everyone points out the guy that looked like Pietro's surgeon. Apparently, according to Tony, the surgeon has an ego bigger than his, and much more arrogant. She wonders how much of that is true, and how much of that is Tony feeling slighted, and tells him that. Tony pouts. 

Pietro, on the other hand, quietens with the mention of his surgery, and she curses herself for not immediately realizing that this might not be the best time for discussion of Pietro's surgeon. It is a touchy subject right now, and the only thing it will do is add insult to injury. And when that happens, Pietro only pushes back harder to cover up his own hurt. Depending on what the subject is, sometimes it becomes nasty, and _that_ has her worried. 

She spends the rest of the movie in partial fear that Pietro might say or do something to push back. When it ends, she breathes a small sigh of relief and then immediately gets up once the credits roll. She tries to get him to get up as well, but he doesn't move from where he's staring at the credits. Why isn't he fast for the one time in her life that he needs to be? 

"Well, that was an interesting movie," Tony says, stretching his arms a little. "Good call on the book." 

Bruce and Sam nod, agreeing with Tony as well, while Clint feigns hurt by saying, "I'm just saying, I picked a better movie." 

Vision is still staring, and he finally says, "I believe this is based on real events? That is frightening." 

Natasha and James stay suspiciously silent, and she sees Pietro's eyes narrow in at the two of them, and then the shake of his head. Instantly she remembers their earlier conversation. Oh dear god, please don't let him say anything, let him shut up, oh god no, no, _no_ , this is bad, oh fuck, shit, this is bad. 

Before she can say anything to stop him, he asks sharply, "Why do you have a problem with my sister?" and she wants to melt into the floor. Can she's shut him up with her powers? Does she want to risk it? Maybe. " _It's almost like she stabbed you in the back or something. Both of you have been forgiven for worse, and I know that the genius has forgiven you for killing his parents and you for not telling him a single thing about your suspicions until the captain realized it himself and informed the genius. Even the two of us have gone from wanting to kill the genius to being good friends with him. So what is your problem with her_?" 

Her eyes widen and she stares at him, aghast at his cruel words before she realizes they were in Sokovian, which means they can't understand hardly anything but a word or two. Still, they are cutting words that are not meant to be said, so she glares at him with anger in her eyes. Whenever Pietro pushes, the only way to set boundaries is to push back hard, until he learns, and so she practically yells, " _Pietro! Take those back or so god help me I will translate them in English_!"

"Do not tell me that I am wrong," Pietro responds with the same anger and in English. "Do not."

"I can tell you whatever I want, especially because I do not need..." she starts to argue, before she realizes that she was about to tell him not to fight on her behalf on things that he hasn't been here for, which would hurt worse than anything else. "You to fight for me."

And then, as an afterthought, " _Take them back right now. Do you want me to tell them_?" 

"Can I know what's happening here?" Sam mildly interjects, "I know I'm the peanut gallery here, but it's getting heated, man. Do we need to intervene or something?" 

She glances at Pietro, who's still spoiling for a fight and defiant, and then Sam. "Nothing worth repeating." 

"Bullshit," James says, looking at her and Pietro with suspicion. "He said something else to Natasha and I, didn't he? Something that has to do with what he asked before." It is not missed on how James cleverly avoids what exactly it is that Pietro had said before. There's no confirmation or denial. 

She purses her lips and gives Pietro a firm glare, not leaving his direction until the fire in his eyes and the anger in his aura simmer down and he looks away. To James, she says, "I _said_ , it's nothing worth repeating. If you have a problem with that, and me, fine, leave him alone." 

" _Now look who's fighting battles_ ," Pietro mutters at her, causing James to become angrier. 

"He called me a hypocrite," she quickly translates before James says anything else. "That one I'll do. Because it doesn't hurt anyone. Before you ask, before you say anything, no, don't even try asking again because you won't get anywhere. Trust me, I'm a lot harder to break than anyone else." Pietro gapes at her, not expecting such a bold defense. 

Well, one Maximoff twin needs to be on their good side, and if it's not going to be her, she's going to make sure he doesn't lose favor.

"Well, it's clear that—"

"Let _me_ make very clear that it's not what he said about you that I'm concerned with, because I can translate that any day without a regret considering it is, in its own way, true. It's what fills the gaps, about what is about him and I, that I'm shielding from. Especially when no one here needs to hear anything more about Hydra," she icily says before turning to Pietro, lying through her teeth when she says that what Pietro said about the two assassins is valid. " _Never do that again, especially not about the genius. He does not deserve any of it, understand? Leave him out of this; leave him out of this or else._ " 

"Wanda," Pietro starts to protest.

" _This is not the fight you are looking for. This is not how to get rid of whatever is in you that wants to let go of anger. Let it go. Leave the room if you have to_ ," she instructs, hardening her face just enough that she hopes the message goes through without provoking him more. She thanks Steve a million times over for explaining what he had felt during his wake-up, so that's she doesn't screw this anymore than she already has.

So Pietro stares at her, before dashing out. She sits back down onto the sofa, slumping down in relief and leaning back while closing her eyes. Crisis averted?

"I know what you're thinking," she calmly says, still closing her eyes and preferring not to see any of their faces right now. Feeling what they are feeling is worse enough. "I know that as soon as I leave FRIDAY will start translating the conversation. But if this is to remain a one-time thing, please do not mention Pietro's surgery or any of that to him for a while? Put it on the no-go list, and if not because I'm asking, do it for him. I know he's the better twin, anyway. And as for the translations, I wish you the very best luck on that." 

She gets up and leaves, but not before letting her magic trickle into the air unnoticeably, and preventing any Sokovian from being understood. She had initially tried to change specific sound waves to prevent _herself_ from listening in to conversations after the revelation she could understand all languages, but there is no reason she can't use this trick to help herself out a little. And it is also for Pietro's benefit, or so she rationalizes. 

But she fears that this might drive a wedge further between her and the two assassin/spies. One that might take longer, if at all, to fix. It is her hope that this doesn't do much to drive a wedge between Pietro and the rest. She has no time to test her theory, because what happens next can only be described as chaos and bone-tired weariness. A chaos that completely overshadows the movie night's disaster.

Week six begins with a quick, two-day operation in Seychelles involving a HYDRA base and an anonymous tip that seems like it might have some merit to it. The public has no clue about it, but it's not like they need to use disguises or anything. Just a simple raid and possible retrieval if there's anything of value. At least that is what they are told. 

When they get there, though, it seems as if everything has already been taken care of. The base has been burned down in what was probably an explosion and what little of it that remains has been ransacked and destroyed without recognition. The only thing that remains seemingly intact is a small warehouse to the side, that when opened, holds a large cache of weapons haphazardly piled in the middle and large, red graffiti. 

The graffiti, in nondescript block letters that are all capital, says, "To the unlucky UN-sanctioned group that finds this, happy birthday! Lots of love, Nomad." 

"Well," Tony stands staring at it, a note of amazement in his voice, "I don't know who they are, but I like this Nomad person's style. But what do we do with all these weapons? Some of these are heavy-duty, war-strength type things." 

"Turn 'em in, I guess. Toss a few of these with Talbot if we don't like the UN having their hands on this, but otherwise..." Clint shrugs, glancing around to see if this Nomad had left any other goodies or notes anywhere else. Natasha and James seem to share the same sentiment, because they are casually looking around too. 

So their two-day mission turns into a day-trip, including the plane flights to and from Seychelles to the Compound. Their debrief is that exact same day as well, and although she doesn't need to be there for any of it, none of the Avengers are there for longer than today. There isn't absolutely no reason for them to do anything in this situation. The UN had been a little surprised, to say the least, but it looked like they knew that their anonymous tip had come from this vigilante. Interesting. The UN does not like vigilantes. 

Time flies, and the middle of week seven brings about another tip that sends them to some remote city in Armenia. On the flight there, she learns that Armenia is closer to Sokovia than London or Portugal. The view, or what little she can catch of it, shows that Armenia is a beautiful country, though much of it suffers from the same problems as Sokovia. She doesn't know what to think of it, really. 

But this time, at the warehouse, the graffiti is green, covers the entirety of a wall, and says, ":( :( :( There's nothing fun here, besides a few hundred pounds of drugs. Next time, I guess. See you soon, Nomad." 

"Nomad," Sam says, looking like he's trying everything he can not to laugh and lose it, "is a little _shit_." 

"What is this," Tony asks, looking at the bags through his fancy glasses that can tell him things, "fancy Eurasian meth?" 

This quickly becomes a pattern within the next few weeks. 

Slovakia has another drug base that is accompanied with a black flashlight with no fingerprints and yellow graffiti that says, "Hmm, I did promise weapons this time. Follow the light. Stay safe, Nomad!" When they pop open the flashlight, a piece of printed paper with coordinates that are still in Slovakia reveal another base full of something that she thinks are bioagents. The weapons that Nomad had promised are these, then. 

Kosovo is completely intact, and also completely empty, which is suspicious. The blue graffiti says, "Sorry, I had to deal with this myself. If you were sent here, tell the UN that they worry too much. I had it handled. Sorry, Nomad." There is nothing else that even so much gives a _clue_ about what was concerning enough that this vigilante had to deal with it. 

Slovenia is a freshly ransacked base, since there are still unconscious HYDRA agents on the floor who still seem to be alive. The boxed items behind them are also intact, and not even opened. The graffiti is hurried, and it says, "Gotta blast, Nomad ;)." She has a feeling that the boxes have something to do with bombs. She is validated when Tony carefully opens them after Vision scans them. 

Serbia is strange. The enemy seems prepared for them this time. Unfortunately, this base they have to investigate, fight through, and destroy themselves. And when all is said and done, there is still a wall that says, "I bet no one can get the graffiti off. Say hello to the Avengers, HYDRA. Catch me if you can, Nomad." It's unclear if Nomad was referring to them, or HYDRA. It does explain why the enemy was able to give an even match, though.

Belize is the only non-Eurasian country in the mini-charade of theirs. White graffiti says, "Last one. Have a great life, Nomad!" and there is an envelope that is clearly marked FOR THE UN AND NOT THE AVENGERS. Of course, Clint opens it and once he reads the contents aloud, the entire room is smiling, snickering or struggling to hold a smile in at what the printed letter says. Unsurpringly, the letter is not at all addressed to the UN. Also unsurprisingly, they end up giving it to the UN. 

The lady who takes it glares like a wannabe Maria Hill at Tony as him and Clint hands the letter over while laughing and grinning. Pietro, Sam, and herself if she is not lying, are snickering while Bruce struggles to keep a straight face. He eventually fails, letting a bright grin take over his face. 

" _I've never had this much fun while losing this much stress. I used to wonder all the time how Captain America and the Commandos looked so good while fighting in WWII, and now I know. Who knew fighting Nazis kept the wrinkles away? :) :) :) Now all I need to know is his skin care routine. I'll figure it out someday. But until then, and I mean never again, have a good life, Avengers! Thanks for helping eradicate all the major HYDRA bases. There's a few minor bases that will be gone within the next few weeks, but I'll take it from here. Tell Cap that's it's all gone, whenever he comes back from his mini-sabbatical. And tell the United Nations to go f*** themselves. On behalf of Nomad, you should tell them. Just saying. It would probably feel so good. But just in case this is some UN lackey reading this and not an Avenger, hey, f*** you! Help with the f****** situation in Myanmar! Or China! Or literally anywhere else. What the hell, are you scared of saying the word genocide or something? Wasn't the UN founded to prevent Hitler and HYDRA again? So what are you doing; sitting on your a****? Food for thought. Sincerely, Nomad!"_

It is a pretty spectacular note, she thinks, and quite a memorable swan song. 

"So," Tony says, after he has checked the date with FRIDAY. _Week ten_ , she thinks after she does her quick mental math. Or, if she looks at it from a different point of view, week six since Pietro's been by her side. "What the hell are we going to do now?"

"It depends on what you're talking about," Natasha answers as she sips her bubble milk tea that has a flavor that seems like numerous refrigerator magnets thrown together harmlessly, like she doesn't already know which of the many things Tony could be talking about. Like _all_ of them don't know, actually. 

"It has been, uh, two and a half months since Steve has left, no?" Pietro asks as he's 'pacing' around the plush chair where Wanda is sitting. "Impressive that he has hidden so well." 

"Not really," James says after a moment's beat, blinking. "Steve wasn't always big and—"

"Yeah, yeah, serum changed his twink status, get to the point," Tony says, waving a hand carelessly at James as a signal. 

James glares for a second. Tony, to his credit, doesn't flinch much. "People didn't pay much attention to Steve when we were back in Brooklyn. Unless he was picking a fight or talking back, no one really thought anything more of him if they were looking at people in a street. Bastard learned how to use that to his advantage. Stealth. S'why he rarely got recognized in public whenever he went out to clear his mind on bad days; he knows how to hide without disguises." 

"Huh," Sam blinks, before turning his grin towards James infectiously. "Then why the hell did he wear tight-ass shirts all throughout D.C. and call just me out while running freakishly fast? That's drawing attention, even forgetting the whole Captain America thing." 

"No one else got him," James shrugs casually, "Just you. He probably wanted your attention, for some reason." He sniffs disinterestedly at the end, earning a snort from Clint and a _look_ from Sam.

"Man, there's a bunch of reasons to get my attention," Sam scoffs, flexing a little. Bruce lets out a laugh at that, and so does she. "Come on, tell me you don't want a piece of this."

"Ain't my type, Wilson. Even if you're offering," James smirks, his Brooklyn drawl being applied lavishly.

"Oh, _fuck_ _you_ Barnes," Sam says with no heat behind his words. "Don't need that kind of old army ration in my life." 

"Okay," Clint hastily interrupts, stepping between the two men, "As much as I love the Barnes & Wilson show, we have something to do and your _hilariously witty teen fiction banter_ will not help anyone here."

Pietro leans over to her, a confused expression struggling to be contained on his face, and whispers in Sokovian, " _What did Clint just say_?"

She laughs and answers, " _Do you remember those books that Milena always read? The ones with the romances where the girls hated the boys but then they were quickly won over? Clint is referring to the conversations that the girl and boy always have before the girl starts to fall in love hard for the boy_." Milena had been one of Pietro's earlier girlfriends, and actually one of the longest relationships he has had. It was, admittedly, a two month affair.

Pietro nods, and then whispers again, " _Of course I know those books. They were the reason we broke up."_ He scoffs _. "Such unrealistic expectations. If our parents have died, and we are only in school because that particular school is free for us, did she really think I had money to buy silver bracelets_?" 

She laughs; she had heard him grumbling the first time around. Clearly it was still a lasting memory. " _What bracelet was that again_?" 

" _Those charm bracelets from the American movies and books! The ones where you can add the little charms and make it your own. The charms were expensive, and the bracelet cord to hold it was bad enough with how much it was_ ," Pietro quietly says as he shakes his head, rolling his eyes. There is a smile on his face though, so she can't help but teasing him more about it. 

" _You know, if you really want to become a character in her book, you could use all this new money, buy her that bracelet and send it back with an affectionate note. Reunion of the decade_ ," she suggests, seeing the look of disbelief in Pietro's face. " _Where is she now_?" 

" _I hate you_ ," he grumbles, shooting her a dirty look.

" _She would take you back if you did that_ ," she continues, because she is just as bad at her ribbing as anyone else. She adopts a slightly a higher voice and pretends to be Milena as she says, " _Oh Pietro! So dreamy! This is so romantic_!"

Both of them ignore the true reason that Pietro had broken up with Milena; she had made too many off-color comments about people, and then constantly begrudged Pietro for having no parents. Milena had also hated her with a passion, which didn't make any sense because one would think she would have been nice to Pietro's sister on principle. No one understood why Milena had been with Pietro if she really didn't like quote unquote _poor people_ , but then again, Pietro had been very popular. Between being a running star, his looks, and his personality, everyone knew who Pietro was. 

"Hey!" Tony shouts. "Wonder Twins! Pay attention." 

She blinks. "What?" 

"We haven't really tried to find him ever since Nomad popped into our lives, and now that we aren't in the constant state of fluctuating between warehouse, Quinjet, and the Tower, the UN wants us back on Steve," Tony summarizes quickly, and she groans. This is ridiculous. They won't find Steve until he wants to be found. They just won't. 

"What happens once we find him?" Pietro asks suddenly, turning to face all of them once more, away from her. "What then?" 

"He's first going to get torn one by the UN," Clint wryly says, answering too quickly for it to have not popped in his head before. 

Pietro blinks in confusion at the phrase, and she clarifies by saying, " _Clint's saying that Steve will get severely_ _yelled at_."

"Oh. And then?" Pietro asks. It's a testament to how no one asks what she is saying anymore, having been used to her translating strange phrases to Pietro. This trust, especially from James and Natasha is appreciated, and probably not possible if it hadn't been Pietro involved. 

"It's up to Steve," Sam responds before anyone else can, shooting a glare to everyone to not contradict him. "We don't know what he wants. We're going to have to respect what he wants." 

"We _were_ ," Natasha says, her own glare heated enough that it looks out of place on her usually impassive and blank face. "Until he went and vanished without a single word on why. It's been two and a half months." 

"It could be two and a half years and we still would respect his wishes, okay? Just like the rest of us, the man's got some things he needs to work out. And if this is it, fine. We try and find him just to make sure he's actually doing okay, and then _leave alone,_ " Sam sternly replies, stressing his words strong enough that she can definitely see how his past job as a VA counselor really influences his Avenging. 

Natasha stares at Sam, before turning on her heel and walking away sharply. For once, her footsteps can be heard quite loudly. James takes one look at Sam, then Natasha, and sighs. "Both of you had to be the stubborn types, huh? Why is this _the stupid company that Steve keeps? Everyone's gotta be stubborn here, don't they_? _Even Lady Magic over here's stubborn in her own right_."

Her eyes widen. James doesn't know Sokovian, and yet the previous statement had come out in Sokovian. Which meant he was speaking in a different language... without knowing that she understood everything now. Including the comment about _Lady Magic_. 

"I'm not even going to pretend that I know what language that was," Bruce says, blinking and looking completely out of his element. "But you should uh, probably let Natasha cool off before you go after her. Serum or not, she's going to maul you." 

James merely holds up his left arm, winking. "And I'll get her back. She'll talk after that." 

"No," she finds herself saying. "Wait. Let me talk to Natasha. We're overdue for a conversation anyway, and there's a few things floating around her aura that won't be solved with anyone else." And before anyone can contradict her, she's walking out too, off in the path that Natasha had taken. 

Minutes later, and with FRIDAY's help, she finds Natasha nursing her milk tea, alone at the countertop of the kitchen. She's sitting on the stool like she's at a bar slamming down her tenth shot, but to each her own. She's just hasn't ever seen Natasha like this before. 

"Hi," she says cautiously, knowing that Natasha could kill her like this with probably only that straw. Natasha's glare registers in her brain, but she's already here and she isn't about to quit now (or as some of the others would say, her mama ain't raise no quitter) that she's made her mind up. "Hello?"

Natasha glares again, but she inches a little closer, knowing that she has her magic in her own arsenal to stop anything that could come flying at her. She leans against the wall near the fridge, so that she faces Natasha at a slight angle.

Quietly, she says, "It's difficult, is it not? It is hard to trust people with histories as unpleasant as many of ours. Yours, especially, though I won't act like I know anything about what has happened before. It's hard to... grow close to people too. Especially when everything you touch turns bloody red." She raises her hand from by her side to being in front of her, and wills a few red sparks of magic raise up in the shape of fire. Keeping the magic going, she looks down with a sad smile. "And people like him come along, and his belief in you makes you feel like maybe you can try again. To trust, to make friends, all of it. He was your little brother, wasn't he? In all but blood."

Natasha sets down her drink hard, flashing dark eyes at her murderously. "Don't use your powers on me."

"I don't have to," she says simply. "Steve is like my older brother, more than the twelve minute gap Pietro and I have can ever be. You think I don't understand what it feels like to not know when or if a brother is coming back? It doesn't get any easier the second time around, knowing that you're left behind in uncertainty. But it does get easier if—"

"Stop talking," Natasha commands. "Just stop talking and leave." 

"Then stop placing blame on the situation. On you, or Sam, or the team, or especially on Steve. Life happens," she counters defiantly, knowing that she's going to have to sleep with an eye open for the near future to avoid being murdered. 

"That's rich," Natasha says, arching an eyebrow. It's nowhere near as scary as it normally is. "Coming from the expert." 

She doesn't take the bait. "I know you don't trust me, or even like me, but if you ever need another ear, I'll be there. Like I said, I know what it feels like, and I needed the help the first time around. You don't have to forgive me or do anything like that. I'm offering what I didn't have the first time, but what I had the second time. Company. And it makes all the difference." Before Natasha can say anything, she leaves.

It turns out that the two of them won't talk together until the attack on Barcelona, when Clint completely fractures his femur internally and there are far too many pieces inside of his leg that the surgery is supposed to take almost six hours. Apparently that time is only the estimated time to extract all of the bone fragments, and not even to piece it all together. The entire time to the hospital, Clint is trying hard to hide his pain from Natasha, who knows that Clint's hiding. 

When the doctors start to tell Natasha what has happened, Natasha looks like she wants to murder someone. Clint looks like he's halfway there to telling Natasha to go back and rejoin the fight. She already agrees with that, but Clint and her know that Natasha's won't budge. 

"I can—I can try something," she interrupts when the one of the doctors looks like he is about to start crying. His coworkers have suspiciously gone back into the operation room already. Smart women. "I could do the rearranging myself and it wouldn't um, it wouldn't take even thirty minutes. And it wouldn't hurt."

Natasha blinks, considers it, and then blinks weirdly again. "How?" 

"Theoretically, if I saw an x-ray of his leg, I could know where all the bone fragments went and I could use my magic to piece them back like I did with the broken vase last week. I don't... I haven't done it before though. I know it won't hurt because I can pull Clint's mind away from that. But it would mean me messing with his mind," she reluctantly says. The real question isn't if Natasha will let her do it, it's if Natasha trusts her enough with Clint. Because there's no way she'll be able to do this without Natasha giving her consent. 

Natasha looks over to Clint, who merely shrugs with his face, and then to the cowering doctor. "You're too shaky and nervous. Get one of your coworkers to get an x-ray of his leg." The doctor takes Clint away in the modified wheelchair and Natasha watches until another doctor accompanies and pushes Clint to the x-ray area. She and Natasha can hear Clint telling the doctor that he can push the wheelchair himself the entire time through. She isn't convinced, which, thank _God_.

"How would his leg heal if there's nothing to hold it all together once you theoretically fix it?" Natasha asks, still wary. But it sounds like the assassin is thinking about it.

"I could leave a little bit of energy in the pieced structure until it heals. They would have to put the cast on, though, but the energy could also make it heal faster. Like the vase. I left a little energy in there until Vision decided to glue it all back together," she says, feeling a little more confident after she answers Natasha's questions. Because now she knows what's she's doing too. 

Natasha still stares at her, laser-sharp eyes piercing through her skin and into her soul. She feels a little haunted by that look. 

"Clint thinks he can trust you," Natasha finally says after a minute. "Clint was also the only one of our six that day who didn't find out what you can really do. He's already gone through someone being in his head once. Came it out of it a different guy for a long while. Don't show him what you can do this time around. He does not deserve anyone bringing back painful memories again." 

She feels strangely validated. She also feels a little scared, because Natasha doesn't like her and somehow also is letting her use her magic on Clint, which means this is a desperate situation. Desperation is something never associated with Natasha. 

But an hour later, when Clint's leg is pieced pack together and Natasha has a gentle smile on her face, she feels better. 

In fact, even when the UN tells them that there's been an incident in Canberra, Australia just a day later, she can't help but keep a little smile with her. Natasha seems to have finally accepted her, and that means all the world. Pietro notices this and laughs about her mini-crush on Natasha, but she shrugs it off. It is _amazing_ to have the Black Widow accept you rather than hate you. It's like all the fear and tip-toeing that she had to do before has been erased. Her past carelessness about Natasha's attitude towards her has been replaced with a smile, because _damn_ the Black Widow trusts her with important things. Validation feels nice. 

Pietro still teases her about her complete 180 attitude. 

" _I thought you told me that you didn't really care about her opinion_?" he asks slyly in " _Whatever happened_?"

" _Oh, shut up_ ," she responds. The younger girl who secretly loved Natasha's move—whenever they were televised—is cheering.

Now, she wonders, what would it feel like to make a friend out of one James Buchanan Barnes? 

The day after the disaster in Canberra is over and everything has been solved, she's back to curling up with a book in her chair, or Wanda's lit chair, as it's been dubbed. She strongly blames Clint and Tony equally for that one. Especially when she had noticed one day how the entire thing has been covered in images of a fire, and had to spend all of ten minutes getting them off with her magic. And if Clint had found all of his arrows suddenly endorsing fire, and Tony found his armor in horribly matched shades of orange, red, and yellow, was she really to blame? 

She doesn't think so.

But today, there are no visible distractions that will take her attention away from finishing the second section of Anna Karenina. At least, there shouldn't have been anything to distract her. But since when have 1940s super soldiers made anything easy and predictable for her? 

"Seat taken?" comes the voice of one James Buchanan Barnes, shocking her. It's merely a formality, she instantly realizes, since there is no one around and he has already sat down. But it's a formality that gives her an out of whatever this upcoming conversation this is going to be, one that she sighed not going to take. After all, she couldn't have planned this better herself. 

"Unless you happen to use a bow or full-body metal armor, no," she responds, wondering if she can smile without accidentally offending him or something. "Or if you have any plans to ruin this book for me." 

"Nah," Barnes says, surprising her with her casual he sounds and feels. She then tries instantly not to read into his aura, if only to keep her own self honest. "There's only one part of me that's metal and I'm keeping it that way." 

"Only _one_ part of me," she mimicks in a horrible impression of his voice that's actually bettered by the Brooklyn accent she layers it with. She has plenty of experience mimicking Steve's _Bah-rouk-lyn_ tendencies at him. Almost instinctively, she does it to Barnes, before realizing that she's done it. Oh shit.

For a terrifying second, she thinks she's overstepped so far that she's fallen off a faux-pas cliff. This is how she is going to die: mocking the best/second-best assassin ever about his arm, a touchy subject, when he already wants to murder her on a daily or something basis. She wonders when she's become so impulsive, and then looks around her. Maybe she should rethink this Avenger/impulse thing. 

"What are you trying to imply?" he asks, raising an eyebrow at her while his face remains blank. She doesn't know if he's actually offended or if he's messing with her. She's inclined to think it's the former, but considering that he's _Steve Rogers's best friend_ and he's sitting in front of her on his own volition right after Natasha's considerably tolerating her, it might be the second. Or so she hopes. 

"Absolutely nothing," she says, sticking her bookmark in her book. "Really. Why would I imply anything when I've already said it, Mr. One More Metal Part Than The Rest Of Us?" 

She just really hopes she didn't seal her fate into a grave. Why is she just making it worse? What is wrong with her? Where are her manners?

"Goddamnit," he curses. "Is everyone on this team just a bunch of smart asses? I swear to motherfucking god, it's like everyone's getting worse by being together." 

Breathing a little sigh of relief, and letting out a little laugh, she says. "I've lived with Pietro all my life. Trust me, I don't think that the Avengers did anything to me." 

 _Not that he would have anything to compare it to_ , her mind bitterly supplies out of nowhere. _It's not like he knows anything_.

"What?" James asks.

Her mind whites out unhelpfully. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Had she just said that out loud, when she didn't even mean to really think it? Shit. Why is she putting her foot in her mouth the one time a deadly assassin wants to play nice? Shit. 

"I—"

"Yeah, I've been an asshole," he says finally, sounding so much like Steve, out of all people, in that moment that she's can't even believe that just a second ago, she could easily tell he was the Winter Soldier. "I know. Now." 

She smiles weakly, and knows that both of them have messed this up far more than they should have. Really, there's one option left. Well, at least according to the books.

"Hi," she says, sticking her hand out and ignoring his suddenly confused aura. "Nice to meet you. My name is Wanda Maximoff and I have abilities that let me manipulate matter and energy. And yes, I can mess with and manipulate your mind or anyone else's if I want to." 

James slowly smiles in return. "Hi," he repeats a little mockingly, just like how she wanted. "Nice to meet you. My name is James Barnes and I have abilities that had let me be the best assassin for seventy years. And yes, I can kill you or anyone else painfully without a trace if I want to." 

Her weak smile turns into a full on grin as he takes her hand and shakes it firmly, before saying, "Call me Bucky by the way. I don't particularly like people who call me James." 

"Natasha calls you James," she says. 

"Like I said," he says, with a deadpan straight face that also reminds her of Steve, "I don't particularly like people who call me James." 

She has to stifle her laugh after that, because she knows that Natasha is probably watching them as they speak and will murder her if she laughs too loud. There isn't no way that Natasha hadn't sent Ja- _Bucky_ here to start over, she knows.

And that's the end of that. 

Everything is going swimmingly from there on, except for the fact that twelve weeks or three months have passed. 

Without a single word from Steve. Not one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't apologize for this chapter, but i already apologize for the next one... there's no stories involved, it's sad, it's got that death no one's been waiting for, it's everything wrapped in a short package, i’m very sorry.
> 
> but please do leave a comment!


	4. farewells and greetings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :(

## Chapter Four

#### farewells and greetings

They get the news from Sharon Carter one late afternoon, and then social media the next day, and then the presses following that. The sentences and titles are constantly different, filled with fluff and details that all boil down to four simple words. Four simple words that have devastated an entire family, a friend group, and left a ripple in the world. Four simple words that to some people out there, mean absolutely nothing, and to others, mean the world.

Just four simple words.

Peggy Carter has died.

They say it was in her sleep, that she died peacefully, and that she had been 96 with a life well lived, even if she didn't remember it sometimes. They say that her death will be mourned by the world, by intelligence communities, by activists, by feminists, by those who cast her as a role model, and by all people alike. They say all kinds of things about her, and bring out histories and biographies that are retold over and over again. Some are less true than others. Some are less flattering than others. Some are less popular than others. They say that she has done this country and her own a great service and that she is a WWII Veteran to be remembered for the ages, and not just because of her involvement with Captain America and the Howling Commandos.

The Avengers mourn for her, as do the agents of the newer SHIELD, which still considers Peggy Carter and Howard Stark to be their founding members, with a mention of General Chester Phillips. Tony and Bucky take the loss the hardest, which is completely understandable. Natasha is close, as she saw Carter as a mentor and an inspiration in SHIELD, and Clint has met her a handful of times during his time with SHIELD. Sam’s met her twice. Bruce, Thor, Vision, Pietro and her haven't met Carter at all, but they all understand grief like a good friend.

The funeral happens on a sunny Saturday morning, since not even nature wants to face the wrath of an unhappy Margaret Carter, dead or alive. It's supposed to last most of the entire day, but she doesn't even mind, and neither will anyone else. What she does mind is the barrage of uninvited paparazzi and reporters trying to intrude on the private moment, and so she throws an energy field around the entire funeral, making it so that people outside of the moment cannot possibly ruin it or even take photos. It's the least she's can do, she thinks.

It begins (for most of them, since the _family_ procession has started last night) inside of a church, where her body will be carried in by Carter’s six pallbearers. Everyone’s minds are filled with grief and sympathy, which is nothing out of place, but she finds that almost everyone wonders at least once if a certain blond superhero will show up and break his public appearnce hiatus for his former love’s funeral.

She doesn't get to wonder much, because the doors open and Carter's beautiful casket, draped by a British flag, is being carried in. There are five men she doesn't recognize, and one she does; the one that everyone recognizes. It seems that people were right.

Steve Rogers has finally re-emerged from his public (and personal) disappearance adventures to Peggy Carter’s funeral in a red suit. He’s the leading left (she stubbornly does _not_ think about his _running_ joke with Sam) pall-bearer, which she knows is an honor bigger than even being asked to be a pallbearer when he isn't family. But for the bearers, she doesn't think it's about honor or pride, but rather respecting her wishes and doing it out of duty, respect, and an obligation to/for her.

He looks miserable, with puffy and swollen red eyes, a splotchy pink face and obvious tear tracks on his face. His nose is red, probably from having blown it one too many times and his lips are set tight, like he's forcing himself not to cry. His movements, stiff, slow, and solemn, are nothing like the fluid, dancer-like ones that is normal of him, for all that he claims not to be a dancer.  It's stunning how many people expect Steve to be _the_ stoic, cold, and detached man’s man because he's a war hero from the 1940s, when he's really one of the most passionate and emotive people she knows. And not just because his aura is loud and bright, and also not just because he _feels_ all the time, but because he isn't afraid to show it. Ever. He's also terribly dramatic.

She stops herself from thinking about it for now, because it is incredibly disrespectful to Peggy Carter, but it doesn't seem as if everyone else shares the same sentiment as her. So she masks her magic clear, and then sends out a little pulse that suddenly has everyone not think about Steve's reappearance here. She might not have known the former Director, but this is, again, the least she can do.

Time flies on, and the service flows beautifully, bringing many—including herself—to tears. The eulogy and the speeches start, and surprisingly (and also not), Steve appears to be the one delivering the first eulogy.

He walks up to the podium solemnly and looks at everyone for a few seconds, familiarizing himself with the crowd before beginning. Steve looks like he's steeling himself not to cry or make a scene. He starts speaking, and begins by addressing everyone.

" _Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Michael, Colleen, James, Angela, members of the Carter and Sousa families, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:  
_

_Today we say goodbye to the daughter of Harrison and Amanda Carter._   _The world will long remember their daughter Margaret Carter as the founder and first Director of SHIELD, as the leading SSR agent involved with the secretive super-soldier serum and the later management of the Howling Commandos, as a champion for women’s rights and as a passionate role model to all. She will forever be written down as a fiercely determined voice for those with their voices silenced, and a silent guiding hand in many of today's successful intelligence communities and operations. She will be missed by those who have benefited from the countless acts of good she has completed._

 _But those of us who loved her companionship and cherished her friendship, know Peggy Carter by the other titles she held: Daughter. Sister. Wife. Mother. Aunt. Godmother. Grandmother._ _I knew her as a colleague, a soldier, and above all, as a close friend and confidant._

 _Peggy Carter was the youngest of a family that she survived by the age of 21, and the matriarch of a family that will hold her legacy and let it survive._ _She was the young girl who dreamed of being Queen and perhaps settling for Parliament, the young woman who fought her way to the top of the intelligence community, and the young soul who accomplished her dreams. Well, most of them. She did have that one particular wish to dance with Rita Hayworth._

 _That spirit of resilience and persistence would see Peggy through nine and a half decades of shattering glass ceilings and a more oppressive fight than most of us will ever know._   _She's lost her ancestral family to war, to cancer, and to broken hearts. She’s lost a great love, her husband. She's lost countless friends and has had to deal with being the last of a family found in war for years. She had once lost respect and pride, lost value and meaning in her life, and direction. For the past few years, she's lost memories and identities, battling an incurable disease and losing herself.  
_

_It’s a string of events that would have broken a lesser person and forced them to not reclaim themselves.  
_

_And it would have been easy for Peggy to let herself become bitter and discouraged; to surrender to being less than the best; to retreat from her dreams and live out her years in a more traditional, quiet life. No one would have expected her to do anything different in her time.  
_

_But that was not Peggy Carter. She was never one to give up, and even when every door was shut in her face, she always managed find the key to the gates of a new path. She would always say, “even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say, 'No, you move',” and she followed her own advice.  
_

_Through her own fight, Peggy Carter became more alive to the struggle and perseverance of others—the woman who could not enlist where she wanted to, the children discouraged of their bold dreams, the young people who were forbidden from their potential._ _Everything that Peggy did had a running thread._ _She wasn't one to champion those of wealth and power, or even sit quiet while they did what they wanted; she instead drummed the rhythms to start the songs of those who couldn't speak. Peggy built the ladder of opportunity for those who wanted to realize their American Dream, which she believed in. Though she was as British as one can be, she helped bring meaning to America’s founding fathers’ decree that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  
_

_She wasn't born with any gifts of money or fame, but she earned those, and the gift of time to save and enrich as many lives as she could. Even with the haze of dementia clouding over her, she never failed to think of others and help as she could.  
_

_Peggy was an immovable force of nature and the type of person who deserved discoveries and natural phenomena to be named after her. And since I have a terrible way with words—as she'd always tease me whenever she was present for a USO tour and I was struggling to remember my lines—it is a struggle to quantify Peggy Carter in a list of words that belong on a resumé she's never needed. It's impossible to capture the spirit of a woman who shot the infamous shield six times just mere seconds after the first time it was picked up by me, or the woman who has walked off three bullet wounds to the leg, or even the woman who managed to befriend countless nation leaders and remain on good terms with all of them. A feat accomplished by no one else._

_She's incredible, and almost too good to be true. Add in her sense of humor, which has insisted I wear this red suit to her funeral so it will not be a dull one, her perchance_   _for blueberry desserts that all but forced the Howling Commandos to walk a dozen miles to find a bakery in order to win her favor after a disastrous mission, and her killer dance moves, which I am not speaking figuratively, and she may sound like a product of romanticized history, nostalgia, and familial loyalty._

_No; Peggy is a product of her own self and her stubbornness through the 20th and 21st centuries. To those who have worked with her or known her dearly, we all have experienced her own stubborn brand of fire. Such fire has led her through familial conflicts and diplomatic incidents alike, including a particular day where she managed to requisition a few bottles of premium whisky and chocolate from Winston Churchill himself. No one knows just how she did it with a mere phone call to his secretary from a phone booth, but then again, no one had asked amidst the jealousy that she had the ability to stubbornly charm herself into whatever she needed. Actually, to this day, despite countless questions, that remains a mystery, much like the incident in Vienna where she found herself thrown in jail for a night._

_As she was so fond of saying whenever someone mourned her Alzheimer's, she has lived a life._

_May she be Agent Carter, Ms. Carter, Director Carter, Margaret Carter, Peggy Carter, or any of the other titles she has carried, Peggy will be missed by all, but fondly cherished.  
_

_May she rest in eternal peace. Goodbye, Peggy_."

Steve doesn't have any papers on him, so he has nothing to look down to or collect once he is done speaking. It is now, when he manages a tired smile for the crowd, that she realizes that he had memorized that entire speech, and that he had run it over enough times to perfect his elocution and the arrangement of his words. Which means he had done it through his grief and his pain. She doesn't know how he calls himself a bad speaker if he has managed that speech so beautifully in such a short time. There isn't no one to write his words for him in this case either—even though Steve has almost always used written words during Avengers conferences. 

What a long-lasting duo: Steve Rogers and Margaret Carter. No wonder they made for a powerful couple that created their own legacies. Though Bucky and Steve are known as the ultimate friendship, she thinks that Peggy Carter and Steve had something almost as equally as strong, even in their much shorter period of friendship. It's a shame, she thinks, that they hadn't had more time together as friends. They would have been a formidable force that might have changed this world to be better much faster.

When he steps away, he sits down next to Sharon Carter and Antoine Triplett, both of whom work for new SHIELD in some capacity and are so-called "legacy" agents. Neither of them were people wondered about Steve’s presence or people who were surprised at it.  It makes sense, anyway, since Steve, while not a legacy agent himself, is around the same age as them and is his own legacy. Still, she does feel a twinge of hurt when it occurs to her that Steve had maintained direct contact with them and not any of the Avengers.

Again, she chides herself for thinking about it during a funeral, and then forces herself not to do it again. So she doesn't. Instead, she cries and smiles during speeches and memories, letting it all wash over her. Looking to her left, at Pietro, he is doing the same thing, soaking in the experience with a solemn, formal air. She is impressed. He does not normally care for such things. Looking to her right, Vision appears to be familiarizing himself with the funeral process, and she remembers that this is the first one he’s been to, unlike any of the rest of them.

It is just an hour to evening when they finally leave, and two hours into evening when Steve does. He walks out with Agent Carter and Agent Triplett (the former also had given a tearful tribute), but whereas they leave together, Steve silently hops onto a motorcycle that appears to be heavily customized and sits there for a few seconds, oblivious to the team watching him through security cameras, now that they finally have a live visual on him.

Steve is incredibly easy to track right now, and whether that's because he's too busy mourning to notice or because he just doesn't care anymore about staying off-grid and inconspicuous, it's hard to say. The cameras easily pick up his movements, from all kinds of angles and no one has ever felt more thankful for D.C. surveillance and security cameras than now. Especially when it’s clear that he's crashing at the hotel that the entire family booked (or pulled in a favor from) for all of the out of district and out of country mourners. The same hotel, actually, that all of the Avengers are staying in for the night, only because the Avengers are sneaky people who had already planned for a chance to see Steve.

As Steve heads up to his floor, downtrodden and defeated, they all have a quick debate on whether or whether not to greet him there. Unfortunately, courtesy loses, and Natasha and Bucky are sent to intercept Steve. The elevator and hall cameras catch everything and are currently displayed for them to watch. She feels a little strange about that.

Natasha and Bucky get to Steve’s room faster than Steve himself. And as Steve rounds the bend, before he even sees the two assassins, he stops for a second, listening to something, and sighs. He visibly slumps a little and tiredness sets in like a second skin, clinging to him. He must know that they're already there.

She watches through Tony’s video feed, unable to look away, as Steve walks towards his room door and sees both Natasha and Bucky. He doesn't acknowledge them, and whether it's because he's tired enough to not want any other conversations, or because he's feeling a little guilty for running, it's hard to say. Steve opens his door with a key-card that magically appears out of the inside of his suit, and almost steps foot inside, before he's yanked back by Natasha.

“Go in, and I will thread the strips of your skin into a blanket,” she threatens, glaring at him with daggers sharper than her voice. “Rogers, how _dare_ you?”

Steve is one of two who isn't even a little bit cowed by Natasha, and the other one happens to be master assassin himself, James Barnes. It's a testament to how exhausted he is that he has the nerve to glare right back at her, holding himself properly. The effect doesn't fully work, because he's in a bright red suit and absolutely devastated, but it says enough. Enough that Natasha raises an eyebrow.

Steve smiles somberly, bitterly. “How dare I come to one of my closest friends' funeral?” Everyone knows how this conversation is going to go, including Steve, and yet he's still playing into a tired, innocent card against Natasha's fuming woman scorned.

“How dare you forget everyone else?” Natasha sharply cuts in, overly pissed off at him that it's probably not even true anger. But then again, it still is justified. 

“How could I forget any of you?” Steve asks with a tired smile that has answers unreadable. “You're too important.”

“You've got a funny way of showing that,” Bucky dryly comments, visibly rippling with relief that his best friend is alive and unharmed. He has a lot of restrained emotions swirling a tempest in his head, but this time, his decades as the Winter Soldier show, with how well none of them can notice. “Runnin' and all for the first time in your life. From us.” 

Steve falters in his tired, yet easy mask and the bitterness from before returns quick as his shield does in battle. He closes his eyes and swallows hard, and when he opens them, there is nothing but a steely determination in them that completely belays the fact that he's been crying for longer than a day. Even she can tell how quickly they focus on Natasha and Bucky from the camera feed. “Must be nice, throwing stones from your glass houses. Didn't think you would sink down there. Then again, you're at my door tonight, aren't you? All of you.” His gaze flickers up to the walls, before he looks around and then finally spots the camera she—and everyone else—is watching from. 

“Playing a guilt-trip, Rogers?” Natasha asks, raising an eyebrow and managing to be completely unaffected, and now she's the only one (minus Steve) who hasn't changed. “Didn't think—”

“Maybe I wouldn't have any other day,” Steve pointedly interrupts, annoyed. "Maybe if it were any other day I would have gone along with whatever guilt trip you had planned for me, but today? I've lost too much today to entertain anything." 

"Want to lose more?" Natasha asks coldly. Only no, this isn't Natasha, this is Black Widow and Black Widow never lets emotions get in the way of her mission. Her words cut through, sharp as icicles dripping from her voice. 

Steve's eyes flicker from the walls to Natasha in a suave, well-practiced movement. He's not even the slightest bit affected. Instead, the bitter smile comes back like it hasn't ever left. "What else do I have left to lose?" Surprisingly, he doesn't sound sad or cold at all, but rather careless about that particular sentence, like he didn't ask something so heartbreaking. She pointedly does not look at anyone but Steve, through the camera or even next to her.

“Just b—” 

"She was the last thread I had left of my past," Steve reflects, cutting Natasha off. "She was the only one I had, the only one who was still there, the only one who knew and now... what else do I have left?" 

In the silence that remains, and Bucky's face is purposefully avoided by her after that, Steve's eyes glaze over in reminiscence and he slips away into his hotel room. Natasha and Bucky don't even realize it until the door clicks shut and he's suddenly gone again. Before anything else happens, and anything else is said, she slips away and out of Tony's room towards the one that she is sharing with Pietro. He is still there, and so will everyone else, talking quietly about Steve, but she does not think she wants to dwell on it. 

Dwelling on Steve in this moment is akin to letting herself wade through his emotions when he doesn't have his mind walls up, and that is an overwhelming task. She is tired, and today has been an experience in and out of itself. Like before, she does not wish to sully it with any thoughts of Steve or the Avengers or any of that and so she goes to sleep dreaming of requisitioned chocolate and firmly planted trees. 

The next day, she wakes up to the sound of her phone ringing obnoxiously loud. Blearily, she picks up and presses the speaker function without bothering to look at who is calling. It must be an Avenger if the caller ID is not automatically said. 

"Hey Glinda, we need you for something," Tony's voice loudly says into her room, and she sighs. She had been in such a nice dream before she woke up. 

"Hnngh," she groans, before blinking and clearing her voice. Her voice isn't much better when she asks, "What?" 

"Great going, you just woke her up," Clint's voice rings from the speaker, and she groans again. The time says that it is seven in the morning, and it is much too early for her to properly function. Even if seven is considered a normal time by many. "Hey Wanda, we need you and your magic." There's a sense of urgency in his voice that was also in Tony's, and she scrambles to sit up, much more alert. 

"I need five minutes," she says, ending the call and rushing out of bed to use the bathroom and get dressed. 

When she arrives at Tony's door, she waits merely a second before the door already opens and everyone is assembled. Including, she belatedly realizes, her brother, who must have gotten the call earlier. Everyone seems like they've been waiting for her, which makes her nervous about what is happening. So she asks. 

"What is happening?" 

"You can detect life with your abilities, yes?" Pietro asks as he zips up to her. 

She looks at him strangely. "Yes, but you know this. They had me identify the living and dead creatures at HYDRA at the same time they were finding the mile swim time for you." She cannot believe he asks this when it was this period of time that both of them will never be able to erase from their memories and nightmares. 

"But you can't bring things back to life," he continues, like he doesn't already know this. 

"No," she says, raising her hand to his forehead to check for a fever. "I can't, otherwise you would have been alive a lot longer ago. Are you sick? Late-onset amnesia? Is everything alright with you?"

"What does late-onset mean?" Pietro asks. "I don't have amnesia or an illness, Wanda, stop that!" He bats her hand away. 

"Speedy Gonzalez, it means that a disease comes later in life or much later than it's supposed to," Tony calls out. "Now if you two Wonder Twins could join us..." 

Pietro vanishes from her side and she sighs, joining everyone else in the room. She glares at Tony, Clint, Sam, Natasha, Bucky, who are all there, and then Pietro. Listen, they woke her up and are making extremely worried for what's to come. She thinks she has the right to give them all unimpressed looks.  

"What is happening?" she asks for a second time, hoping to get a better answer. 

While everyone looks at each other unsteadily (minus, Pietro, who has zipped out of the room to god knows where) she looks around. The hotel room is just like it looked when she was here last night, no change there, but a few of the Avengers have left and are presumably sleeping, like she should be. With the exception of everyone crowded in the non-bedroom area (she has a feeling Pepper is sleeping in the bedroom) nothing has changed. And then she hears the sound of someone's retching in the bathroom. 

"Who is vomiting?" she asks, hoping that's this will at least receive _an_ answer. "Can I know why you need my magic?" 

"Bruce is sleeping in the bedroom; don't go in there, we don't need Jolly Green to come out," Tony quickly says. "Pep had to leave early for a business conference, so don't look for her, and Captain Pall-bearer is puking out the Star-Spangled Banner while your boyfriend is trying to help him. Hill is out talking to Share-bear." 

She blinks. That was a thorough answer, and she wishes she understood more of it. "Vis and I aren't dating, first. Second, if Steve, who apparently is here, is vomiting into the toilet, then why is Vision helping and not someone who has experience in these things? Third, who is Sharebear? And last, what does this have to do with me?"

"Oh, my mistake, _Vision_ wanted to learn," Tony shrugs casually, "Though I don't think seeing a super soldier superpuke is the best introduction to drunken habits. Sharon Carter is Sharebear. And this concerns you because as soon as Spangles stops vomiting like it's '36, according to Barnes, there's shit that needs to be done." 

She suddenly has the sinking feeling that the rest of them have received an explanation for Steve's three month hiatus and last night... that she has missed. Otherwise, none of them would be this unconcerned and calm about everything. Not that they aren't panicked, but she has another feeling it has to do with her, and not him. 

"Steve is... err, was drunk?" she asks, now very confused. "He can't get drunk."

"Apparently Thor gave him a flask of his Asgardian-proof shit at one point," Clint says. "And he drank it all last night like a champ. Bastard isn't even hungover, just with a bad stomach." 

There's a silence that is filled with Steve groaning. 

"Really bad stomach," Clint quickly corrects. 

Bucky sighs. "You know what? I'm just going to check in and see what's happening. Lord knows I've got _experience_ with Steve's fucking shit." He heads in the direction of the bathroom, and the sound of Steve throwing up again fills the air, before Vision quickly leaves and Bucky shuts the door. 

"It seems as if the mead had spoiled, contained outside of Asgard for too long," Vision says as he joins them all. "Judging by the captain's body mass and food intake, he should finish vomiting in another few seconds." 

Pietro suddenly appears again, looking extremely puzzled. "Trip said Peggy Carter left a few things to Steve, but also this cellphone." He pulls it out of his pocket and hands it to Tony, who takes it with glee and apprehension. "Password is something that Steve already knows." 

Trip? Since when is Pietro acquainted with Agent Triplett?

"What does Steve know?" Bucky yells from the bathroom. Damn Steve's superhearing. "Apparently he knows what?" 

"Tell him that he is a pathetic lightweight," Pietro says with a straight-face. He hasn't even met Steve properly yet, not that she knows of, and he's already giving Steve shit. She sighs. And then she realizes what Pietro is doing. 

"Oh, he can hear you," Sam says with a long-suffering sigh of a man who has probably wished that Steve didn't have super senses. "Loud and clear." 

A minute passes. The sound of a door opening and closing catches all their ears. Three minutes pass. The door opens and closes again. 

Both Steve and Bucky come join them all, and now she can see what happened. Steve has taken a shower, because now he smells like cheap hotel soap. A lot of cheap hotel soap. And Bucky just looks like he is completely finished with his best friend. It's extremely comical. 

Steve glances at Pietro, and then dryly says, "I bet I could have drunk you under even before the serum, but that we'll find out later." The look on Steve's face suggests that he knew just what Pietro was doing, too. 

"Steve," she says, looking at him. 

"Wanda," he says in response, though his voice is much lighter. "I—”

"If you can give me a straight answer," she interrupts, looking him dead in the eye. "Then all is forgiven. _Welcome back_." Oh well, even if she'll never hear the apology, she will hear this. 

"Pietro says you can tell apart living and dead matter, but you can't reanimate matter," Steve slowly says, making sure he had  this right. He also looked like he was recalling all of the things they had tried out and making sure her abilities lined up. "But I know that if something is in frozen stasis, you have the power to reanimate it for at least half an hour before it completely fails." 

She doesn't know how to tell him that she hasn't touched that part of her power since he had left. She doesn't even know if she can still do it. "Yes, and is there a point to all this?"

"If I give you a Petri dish of cells in a version of that frozen stasis, do you think you would be able to do that?" 

"I can try." 

Natasha looks at him, and then pulls out what she had thought was a hypothetical closed Petri dish out of nowhere and sets it on the table in front of her. Wanda carefully lifts the lid off with a strand of magic, and then lightly sets it aside. She closes her eyes and tries to puzzle what is in front of her. 

It is unnaturally  _strange_ , and that is the first observation she makes, no matter how dumb. The contents in the dish are alive, and they seem to be cells with an inclination to replicate by themselves when they don't have to. Like a cancer. But try as she might, she doesn't know what's powering it. Everything is alive, but she can feels the life slowly draining and refreshing, draining and refreshing in a cycle that loses a little energy each time. Essentially, the life is frozen in place, but also dying at the same time. She focuses on trying to stop the fast replication and conserve energy to bring the cells to full life, and after a minute of her magic trying to breathe more life, something works. 

"Yes, I can." She's then leaves a little bit of magic to continue the process, so she can see how long it takes before everything fails, and then looks at Steve, who's staring with curiousity. "They're cancer cells, are they not?" 

He blinks. "Yeah, they are. Um, Dr. Ross and Dr. Cho had a question. Um, could you try and nullify the unnatural replication somehow?" 

Natasha sets down another Petri dish, and she lifts up the lid again. This time, she pauses to observe the life a second. She feels like a biologist should be doing this, not her with some weird power. Then again, a biologist had technically asked, so maybe it was kind of similar. A minute passes by and she's still trying to figure out how the energy flows and decreases, when suddenly, the entire thing collapses. Almost dead; had it not been for the fact that there are still some cells left, even if they won't replicate. After these last cells die, then the whole thing is gone. 

"It just... everything's almost gone," she sputters out with shock, but the look on Steve's face suggests that he already knew that. His face falls a little, though he shakes it off with an easy smile. "The last cells are it, and when they're gone..." 

"Well, that's what they thought," Steve says causally, like it doesn't matter to him at all. She suspects it does matter to him, albeit in the 'cure cancer and save lives' kind of way. "Okay." He sighs heavily and plops down on the sofa behind him, leaning forward on it with his head hanging down. "Okay." 

And suddenly, Steve isn't talking about the cells at all. 

"Okay, your little biology reprieve time is over," Tony says, and she realizes that all of the them had been promised an explanation, but they hadn't yet reviewed one. So she hadn't missed much yet. Maybe the initial apology and maybe an explanation for the cells, but whatever. Wanda didn't really need those. 

"I know," Steve sighs, like a man weighing bleak options for a dark future. 

"I guess the real question is if you want to come back, because there's two different conversations depending on your answer," Tony says. "We want you back, Cap. There's no other way to say that." 

Steve's head pops up as he stares at Tony's in disbelief. "You're kidding." When Tony doesn't say anything, he turns to look at everyone else and confirm that. Same expression. "After... Really?"

"Well," Sam grins knowingly, "We gotta prevent you from becoming a mob boss, so, you know." He shrugs. 

"Or a criminal mastermind," Bucky says, lips curving into the barest of smiles. "It would look bad on the rest of us if we let you terrorize the streets of Brooklyn." 

Steve stares at his best friend, and then Tony, and finally Natasha, who stares back unflinchingly. He sighs, looks down again and shakes his head. "When do I start?" 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	5. love and lust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oooh. Welcome back.

## Chapter Five

#### love and lust

Steve settles into the Tower like he had never left, learning everything that he's missed easily. It would be lying if she said it was the easiest time for them, adjusting back to a few things, but they manage. Breakfast is an easy deal, and she knows all of them miss having breakfast waiting for them as they're coming down by Steve, so this is nice to come back to. Training, on the other hand, amps back up to the level that Steve usually had run it at. The first few days _hurt_ because of that. Other things like Steve's little sketches, Steve's habit of wearing tight shirts, or even Steve's love of old music come back into their lives unapologetically. 

She doesn't really know what it says about them when it takes only two weeks for Steve to become a normal fixture in the Tower again. She especially doesn't know what it says about them when it takes the same two weeks for the rain to boil over. 

It is Wednesday night, movie night, but she's already been in the room for the past few hours reading _One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest_ and almost completing it. She hopes to finish it before they start the movie later, so she can understand it and also not be terribly shocked. Last time she was caught off guard by a movie, she managed to give the rest of them nightmares about animatronic characters and jump-scares. Although Bucky had said it was a funny dream and Natasha had merely seemed to 'kill' them all and lucidly defeat her nightmare, the rest of them hadn't fared so well. So, she wasn't going to make that mistake. Especially since a lot of them probably have their own nightmares about medical procedures and body modification that she does not need to add to. 

It is Wednesday night, movie night, and everyone is pouring in, ready to watch what Clint has been begging to watch for the past three months. They were supposed to watch it last Wednesday, but Clint wanted to scar Steve too, and Steve had been out for a visit to the UN. So, this one. It worked out for her, too, at the very least. 

"I thought these were on Thursdays," Steve says as he walks in to the full room five minutes later after everyone else. He's in his pajamas and adorably confused, like a puppy would be, especially with his face scrunched up like he's thinking about it. "What movie are we watching, anyway?"

"You've missed a few things," Tony says, and she has a bad feeling about where this is going to go, "Thursdays suddenly became 'finding Cap' days, so Wednesdays are now movie nights." 

That stops Steve short. He blinks. "I-I don't even know if you're joking," he admits after a quiet second, pushing his hands into the pockets of pajamas deep enough that she envies how big the pockets are if they can fit Steve's giant hands. "Were they? Really?"

"The UN would ask us every Thursday night if we found you yet after a while," Sam says, taking pity on Steve's stricken face. "Hard to have an Avengers' team on-call without their leader and all." 

"But you did—?" Steve asks, a large question mark on his face. "They called you guys in for Barcelona, right? And Boston. Those were on the news. Nothing went wrong without me, what are you talking about?"

She hear Clint mutter about how they are going to have to postpone the movie for next Wednesday now that Steve's gone and said it. She feels a little bad for Clint, actually, now. All he wants to do is watch his movie, which is based off an admittedly _interesting_ book.

"You're forgetting Seychelles, Armenia, Slovakia, Kosovo, Slovenia, Serbia and Belize, and the attack in Canberra, Australia," Natasha bluntly says as all of them watch the color drain from Steve's face as soon as she mentions Canberra. It's probably suck in at that point the total number of attacks and missions they've gone on. "Not to mention the cleanup after Bucharest, which wasn't even us." 

Steve sharply exhales. "Okay, that's more than what I thought, but nothing went _wrong_ during Barcelona and _Canberra_ _,_ right? You guys didn't—you didn't need me, right, it was all handled?" 

She wonders why Steve cares so much for the attack during Canberra, and not the seven others he didn't know about, or even Spain. What is so special about Australia's attack? 

"We found out that Wanda can piece back shattered bones," Natasha informs him blandly. Natasha seems not to pull her punches. 

Steve opens his mouth to say something, obviously falling for it, but then stops short of himself and sighs, looking down. He mutters something that she can't hear, and then sighs again, almost like he's steeling himself for an argument. "Great. So we're doing this now. I was wondering when it would happen." 

His words cut through the air like one of Natasha's knives, and she realizes that the tenseness from Steve that has been following him has been him carefully watching himself. Like he knows that one slip up and everything is disturbed. But this peace had to have been broken sometime, and now is better than never.

"Three fucking months, and you think this conversation wasn't going to happen?" Tony hisses, his hurt swirling around in the air like blue calligraphy ink dripping from a pen in a water cup. 

"It has been a—" Bruce starts to say, and Steve's face shifts. Drastically. 

"Three months," Steve repeats softly, a foreign expression coming over his face, "Three months where every day felt like a lifetime. Yeah, I knew this was going to happen."

"A lifetime," Sam repeats. "Okay, hold up. Is that, a good lifetime or a bad one? It sounds like the latter."

"What, shocking that he regrets leaving? Shocking that he figured out what a bad idea leaving was?" Tony mutters, and Steve's face goes through another series of strange expressions that finally end in him looking like he's going to punch something. She can't feel anything from him right now; his mind walls are up. She doesn't know if she wants to know what he's feeling, or not.

"I—" Steve forcefully says, tensing up even more, "I don't regret it. Okay? I. Don't. Regret. It. It was either take a break or break down and between... everything, I think I made the right decision." 

She catches his hesitancy and the coverup. There's so much more that he isn't saying. But what is that? 

"Between what?" Natasha asks, pouncing upon it like a spider on prey. 

He smiles, strong and bitter. God, this man bleeds emotion even when he isn't projecting his aura all the way down to New Jersey. His mood and facial expressions swing like a pendulum. 

"Did you know that Captain America isn't _allowed_ to have PTSD? Not allowed to be seen getting help for mental issues that don't supposedly exist? Not allowed to take a day off without a month's notice and approval? Not allowed to pass on almost all missions?" Steve scoffs, rolling his eyes and sounding like he's mockingly repeating something that someone has told him. " _Between_ the UN's denial, the three years it took me to realize that there might be something to what people tell me, this goddamn puppet game, and the nursing home saying Peggy didn't have much time left, there just didn't seem like a way out. So I made one." 

After that, she can feel everyone's auras shift from curiosity to anger at the UN, shock at his words, confusion, and sadness. Together, she could feel a thick, murky swamp of negative emotions holding over everyone like the storm clouds might burst. 

"We would have—"

"No," he interrupts, shaking his head. "Noticed? Yeah, maybe, if I didn't take a goddamn break. Done something about it? I wouldn't have let you." 

"And why not?" Tony asks. There's definitely some offense in his part, because Steve's just implied that they would have done nothing about it, and that they would just ignore something wrong with him. "The UN is filled with a bunch of people that need to be taken a leg down if they think you aren't a human being with—" 

"I _knew_ what I was getting myself into when I signed. I thought I could handle it, and even if I couldn't, it was a better alternative than the Accords. Better alternative than anything they were suggesting," Steve says, firing back with a level of steel that hasn't been directed at them ever. 

"Why didn't we know anything about this? You know, we could have done something about—" Tony tries again. 

"Don't. There's a reason I got myself in; don't get me out."

Natasha looks like she's wants to yell at Steve and slap him. "And if you can't handle it this time either, and leave again, what's to say you're ever coming back? Why not _end_ this right now? Unless there's something you're not telling us." 

Steve merely stares at Natasha, almost like he's trying to find out if she's knows anything more than he's not saying, implying there's more. "Trust me, I'm not taking a sabbatical again." There's a sharp grin to his words, and she thinks, _mafia boss_.

"You seem certain about it," Sam comments, leaning back into his chair now that some of the tension is starting to dissipate. 

Now, the grin actually materializes on his face. This time, she thinks, _criminal mastermind_. "Oh, the UN is _pissed_ at me. It's almost like I called their bluffs on my contract when they haven't called mine." 

"You seem unusually chipper for a guy who's blown off the UN for three months when you can't take a day off," Sam blinks. 

"Well, who knew fighting Hydra for three months was great therapy? I never had that much fun while losing that much stress," he winks, sounding eerily like something she's heard before. She can't place it, but—

"Nomad," Bruce says. 

"Had some help," Steve confirms, and she fights with herself to stop from gaping openly. 

"You took three months off because you were fucked over enough that you wanted to keep on doing your job, but only secretly? And then fucked all of us over, too," Tony sums up a little harshly, but maybe justifiably. 

"I—" Steve's about to say. 

"The UN wants Captain Rogers to fly over to London for an unspecified purpose, ASAP," FRIDAY interrupts. Steve's face falls, but he gives off relief as he jumps to his feet and heads out.

"We have to wait another week to watch the movie," Clint groans, covering his face with his hands. 

"Captain Rogers wishes to inform Clint to proceed with watching One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest if that is the movie for the night. He says that he has already seen it, since Dr. Cho has a quote unquote strange fucking taste of humor given that she's a doctor who really shouldn't watch that if she wants people to trust her, Jesus Christ." 

She laughs at how FRIDAY's voice monotonously delivers Steve's words when they are clear missing the wonders of voice inflection. Clint brightens up and starts to press play. 

No one is going to be paying any attention to the movie, she knows this though. Not when there's still more he's not saying, and so much more that's unclear. Not when he's dropped a few bombshells without clear cut explanations. 

"What the fuck is this," she hears Bucky mumble next to her when the opening scene finishes. He clearly hadn't been surprised when Steve mentioned Nomad or PTSD, so he's paying attention. It doesn't surprise her that Bucky and Steve kissed and made up already, without any of the kissing. Which is actually a shame since Bucky so very clearly _wants_ to kiss Steve. A lot. Repeatedly. Unfortunately, since Steve doesn't seem like he knows. 

It's something all of them know about, besides Steve, because he is an oblivious little puppy when it comes to the love that his best friend has for him, and it is sad. Pathetically sad. They all have a group chat running on how long Bucky will pine for, and daily running bets on how many times that Bucky will look at Steve with that look on his face. She has won every day for the past week and a half straight, only because of Clint's interruption of what would otherwise be a perfect record ever since Steve came back. 

It's gotten even worse since Steve came back, actually, almost like Bucky thinks his case is hopeless since Steve has proved that he can live without any of them. Before, at least, Bucky had a hopeful light in his eyes a few times, when Steve would look at Bucky like Bucky was his world. Those were the days when they all sometimes _wondered_ about Steve, but any thoughts were quickly shut down when all of the, realized that it was the same look that she herself had when Pietro came back. A look of "I'm holding onto my family if I have to die for it" basically.

Steve is sunshine and three-pm baked lemon meringue and warm hugs and tight muscles and silly sketches and teasing smirks and precise shots and it's really easy to see why Bucky is gone for him. And they're all pretty much sure that Steve would be in love with Bucky if it weren't for the fact that Steve is straight. Maybe not even straight, maybe he's aro/ace for how little he seems to personally care for romance or even sexual attraction. Never has she even once felt _anything_  relating to love or sex from him or his aura.

At least, that is what she also tells Pietro when he asks he if the Captain is single. She's not blind to her brother's actions, and she's seen her brother appreciating Steve's body more than a few times here and there. 

" _Pietro, don't do it. If he were gay, you know that Bucky and Steve would be attached more than they already are_ ," she sighs. " _Also, do not corrupt poor Steve_."

" _Are you sure_?" is all Pietro asks (as if he knows something she doesn't) before he disappears from her sight before she can yell at him not to do the hare-brained thing he is going to. She sighs again and picks up _One Thousand and One Nights_. She's tried her best, though Pietro is seldom dissuaded from things he wants to do. It's all she can hope for, that something doesn't horribly go wrong. Unlike this book. God, this book is a mess that she unashamedly loves. 

The next morning, when she goes downstairs to eat breakfast, she sees the Avengers all collectively eating cereal and blinks. She does not see her brother nor Steve anywhere and while that may not have rung any bells for any of them, she remembers the conversation she had with Pietro. And the suspicious timing of it all. 

"Godammit," she curses. "God-fucking-dammit." She is aware she doesn't curse often in English, and knows that this is why they're all staring at her with wide eyes and dropped jaws. 

"You okay there, Red Queen?" Tony asks. "I know you hate cereal, but..." 

"No," she sighs, her mind a constant loop of swears, "We were all wrong." 

"About?" Natasha asks, before the elevator dings and Pietro runs to the kitchen with no shirt on and hastily thrown on pants. 

"Good morning," he grins all like the morning person that he is not, which everyone also knows. "Why is there only cereal?" 

"That's what happens when you have sex in the morning with the _one_ person who cooks breakfast in this place, you fucking asshole of a brother," she says. "I cannot _believe_ that you went and did the thing I told you not to do, especially in the morning, because now there's only cereal and cereal is absolutely disgusting, heathen, I can't believe this!" 

The dropped jaws stay there. Oh good, now they've figured it out too. 

"Wanda," Pietro protests with a devilish gleam in his eyes that suggests he had a very good night indeed, curse Steve, "But it would have been a shame not to and—"

"Hold up," Tony says, the first to recover. "Can we go back to Steve being gay?" 

"I'm bisexual," Steve says nonchalantly as he walks into the kitchen much more polished than Pietro. He appears to be unruffled about the fact that everyone now knows that he slept with Pietro, another team member, and the fact that they've all caught him casually having sex when he's never done so before. "And is there really only cereal or are all of you in a cereal mood? No eggs, nothing? Ugh, cereal is _disgusting_ , and hmm, maybe there are fruits around." 

She throws her hands up as if to say 'see? he gets it' in triumph. 

"You're bisexual?" Bucky quietly asks and _oh shit_ , there's something she had forgotten entirely. Bucky. Bucky's belief that his best friend was always straight. 

Steve is rummaging the fridge for fruits as he unconcernedly nods and says, "Yeah. I thought you knew, what, with that diplomat that I... saw, and all the women you guys jokingly set me up with."

"If I knew I would have added men into the dating mix, Steve," Natasha shoots him a dry glare. 

He suddenly freezes and slowly pokes his head out of the freezer with a troubled expression. "W-what?" He looks around from person to person. "You didn't know I was... I thought... Pietro didn't think that... oh, for the love of Thor, did I just come out to most of you?" His walls fall down, but there's no sign of panic or confusion in them. They quickly go back up, but she's already felt the damage done. Steve isn't fully honest about something, or he's not letting himself feel anything. But why?

It's not like he's _pretending_ to nonchalantly come out or anything. It's not like he knows that _they_ didn't.

"You _were_ the straightest dude around here, Cap," Tony says, grunning wryly and placing an emphasis on the word were. "And like Natasha said, we would have set you up."

"I thought it was a joke after the first few times! I never went on any dates with any of the people, and some of the people you suggested were so out of my type that it's laughable. And Sharon. You suggested the nurse across the hall, _Sharon,_ who was Peggy's niece!" Steve protests, and okay, that is believable and funny. 

"Okay, that was because I wanted to see if you made Sharon at the time, which yes you did but no you did not react like I wanted you to," Natasha frowns sadly. "Also what diplomat are you talking about?" 

Steve shakes his head. "The one that you're not finding out anymore from me. Find out on your own time, because at least that one was clear as day." 

"There are more people than the diplomat?" Clint asks, face lit up in glee. "I told you, I _told_ all y'all motherfuckers that! Beirut went waaay too smoothly if Steve was an inexperienced honeypot!" 

"You said that Steve's too hot not to get laid often, or even propositioned," Natasha frowns, looking at the archer exasperatedly. "Which we all know, because that one's obvious, idiot. We just didn't think _Steve_ knew it."

"Bastard wears those tight shirts," Sam says, rolling his eyes as he finishes his bowl of the boring Cheerios. Oh, so Sam's over it. "He knows." 

Steve merely grins at Sam, who looks away with an exasperated shake of his head. There's another story that has happened between those two men. "Of course. People just think what they want to, and especially that I don't do casual flings. Which, by the way, is a damn shame because so many people don't get you're flirting with them since Cap is a cockblock like nothing else. Or they're straight as an arrow." 

He looks over to Sam, who suddenly looks very surprised.

"You do casual?" Pietro asks, looking up, and she rolls her eyes. Of course Pietro is glad to hear that he isn't starting a long-term relationship with Steve or anyone. "How do you think—"

Steve throws his two orange peels into the trashbin, before winking at Pietro and leaving. She thinks that he is going to find a better breakfast, but she can't help but admire the perfect timing of all that.

"Pietro," she growls, turning back to her brother as soon as Steve is out of earshot. " _We just got him back. If you do anything to ruin that, ruin him, or ruin this at all, I swear on Mama that I will hunt you down_!" She says the last bit in Sokovian, not needing anyone to fully understand that. 

" _You have no belief in me; I'm hurt_ ," Pietro shoots back, clutching his heart. " _No sibling solidarity, younger sister?_ " 

" _Twelve minutes_!" she gripes, just as she has done almost every single time he brings this up. There have been a few times where she has just told him to leave, or a few she has ignored him altogether, but her response is usually the predictable one. " _Twelve goddamn minutes_!"

He merely smirks, and runs out, but she's frustrated enough that she throws an energy ball at him, which covers him like a blanket and prevents him from running out of the magical trap. Less than a second later, she stares at him and her hands in horror, flicking a finger to retract it. "What did I just do to you?" 

Pietro stares at her in the same horror, not even bothering to run now that their conversation has been forgetting in the wake of this. "My powers... I can't feel them." He sounds terrified. 

Her appetite vanishes, as does her anger. " _What_?" she asks in Sokovian. 

He shakes his head, his face a mixture of wild horror and fear. His emotions are not any better. " _Wanda, this is not funny, I don't know what you did, but give them back! This is not a fair response_!" 

" _I don't know what I did! I just wanted you to stop running away_!" she says, panicking internally at what happened. " _I don't know_!"

"Can you just quit the Sokovian so the rest of us can understand what's happening? Because this is a _problem_ , if Wanda can go around taking people's powers," Tony bluntly says from where he's nursing his fourth cup of coffee. He sounds a little fascinated, above all things. 

"Repeat that?" Steve asks from the doorway, looking like he had been told by a certain AI that there was an emergency. His face is pinched in concern. "You can what?" 

"I threw a ball of energy at Pietro when was going to speed away, but it was something that was supposed to dissolve as soon as it touched him and instead it got rid of his powers." 

He blinks, clearly not expecting that. Steve looks over to Tony, whose face has the mark of a scientist waiting to discover something, and then Natasha, whose face is blank when her thoughts are whirling too fast. He sighs and looks back to her. "Were you thinking anything when you threw it?" 

"Yeah, that I wished he wouldn't run out of the conversation so that I could finish yelling at him," she says. 

Steve shrugs. "I dunno, why don't you finish yelling at him, see if that's how this magic works, or throw another energy ball while wishing he would run out so you don't have to... uh, see him right now and I don't know, eat an orange in peace. Or something. Don't even think we have oranges right now." 

Her eyes widen. "That's—" 

"I spent the better part of nine months being Loki's entertainment," he shrugs. "I know a little bit of how this works."

"When did you do that?" Clint asks in shock, whirling around fast to see Steve, extremely wary of this piece of information.

"The ten months it took me to say yes to moving here," Steve says, sparing Tony a meaningful glance. That's a _story_  right there, between the two men. "Give or take a week." 

"There is an extra month," Pietro says, though his voice rises in a question. 

Steve smiles knowingly, like he was almost waiting for someone to call him out on that. "Asgard and the All-Father wanted evidence that I was truly the leader, and not just some pretty-boy scapegoat to appease them. It took a month for that paperwork and Loki's trial to be over. Asgardian law is just... a tangent I'm not going on when Pietro's abilities are gone. Wanda, you should get on that." 

" _Say something that makes me angry_ ," she tells Pietro. " _I don't know, tell me something_." 

"Do you remember the day when you told me for hours how much you appreciated Natasha's skills and how you wanted to meet her so badly and learn how to hurt someone with your legs like that back in Sokovia?" Pietro says, in English, right in front of everyone else. This was not what she meant when she told him to make her angry.

"You said you wouldn't mention it! And that wasn't what I meant." She yells, feeling a little betrayed. She takes Steve's advice and launches another energy ball at him. It catches him and covers him in another blanket, but by the time she removes it, he's grinning from ear to ear. 

"You said to make you angry," he shrugs casually in a way that she knows that he's good again, " _And what motivates better than shame_? _What else is going to get you to be angry when you know it's coming_?" 

She turns to look at Natasha, who looks a little amused by it all, and sputters out, "I didn't... it wasn't... not like... I can't believe he said that because... I'm so sorry. I'm literally so sorry." 

Natasha shrugs, though there's a pleased smile on her face at this. She groans and looks away from Natasha in embarrassment. 

"Love you, sis," Pietro says before he dashes away. She thinks that it's probably best to run away now and pretend like she's trying to chase him down, however pointless that may be. So she flees, and hopes that they will forget. 

But since no one has bothered to mention to her that her team is secretly a bunch of _elephants_ , they all remember and tease her for the next few days. She wants to curl up into a ball and _die._  But instead, she decides to get out of the Compound and explore for a while. People watch. Be normal a little, get away from the constant presence of the Avengers. 

It's a pleasant experience, she thinks. 

Besides the cab ride to the garage where she had left a motorcycle (one that she had to convince Steve to borrow) in parking for the day, because she can't take a cab to the Compound, not exactly. That's never happening. She'd be in so much trouble.

"Hey," the cabbie says when she gets in. She's already closed the door and the cab has already started to move when she notices that the guy is wearing a mask of some sorts. "Where to?" He's already driving, and now he asks? She doesn't like this, but decides to stay to see what might happen. She can defend herself. 

She names the garage. He merely nods. 

"You know," he says. "I'm actually doing my friend a favor here, running his cab for a day. It's a nice change of pace."

She nods mutely, wondering what the hell is up with this man.

"Listen, I'll just skip the pleasantries," he says, and she tenses up a little. "The author is sick and tired of you avoiding yourself, and running from what you can do." 

The author? Who the hell is that? Author of what?

"Listen," he continues, "The author didn't put in this much time and effort for you to pretend that your magic doesn't exist. Embrace it. Embrace yourself. Have you ever noticed that you never think about yourself as Wanda? The author is also sick and tired of using the word 'she' to describe you. Apparently there's no variety in her sentences if everything has the word 'she' or 'her' in it."

"The... author?" she asks. "The author of my story? Who is writing my story?"

"Not important," he shrugs off. "But the author wants you to know that they would like to use your name and possessive forms of your name in their sentences. I can imagine it would be boring otherwise."

"O... Kay," she says, blinking. "Tell your... author, that I will think about myself more often." She has no clue what she's saying. 

He nods. "This is you." 

She gets out quickly, maybe a little quickly, and by the type she gets money out of her purse, the man and the cab are gone. Just like that. Strange. But she's just saved a forty dollar cab fee (so expensive!!) so she's not to complain. Money has always been something she's been cautious of.

She shakes her head. The man had said something about embracing herself? She feels a little bad about not paying. Maybe this is how she will make it up to him. 

So sh— _Wanda_ , smiles and then goes to find her motorcycle among the crowd of bikes and cars in the parking garage. Wanda feels like she's had enough of a break from the Avengers' teasing, and that she would like to go back. 

Of course the second she walks back in the Compound, she’s met with a wave of chaos. _Wanda_ rolls her eyes. Because of course. Because she wouldn’t expect anything different from any of the Avengers, in all honesty. 

“What the hell?” she asks to no one in particular in horror. 

Steve looks up from where he’s arm-wrestling Bucky (right arms, both of them) and nods a hello before going back to the challenge. Both of the supersoldier’s faces are scrunched in pure concentration and strength and she pulls out her phone to grab a photo. On the couches behind both of them are the rest of the Avengers, with popcorn and candy as they call out loud bets. Clint seems to be narrating the entire event. Tony’s squinting at a phone frantically, and when she realizes what the phone is she realizes why. 

“Ha!” Steve exclaims in glory, punching the air with his fist excitedly. “Hand the phone over now, mook.” 

“Best six out of eleven,” Bucky offers when Tony gives him a panicked look. 

Steve glares at both Bucky and Tony, and then Clint, who’s still babbling on and announcing as if the match is still happening. Clint shuts up at the same time when Steve suddenly springs out of the chair he’s sitting in and swipes the phone from Tony’s hand in one fluid motion. 

“Wha-hey!” Tony yelps, clutching the air where the phone used to be. 

“I should have gotten this phone weeks ago,” Steve says, turning it over in his hands like it has all the secrets to the universe. Maybe it does, at least to Steve hinself. “Thanks a lot.” He doesn’t sound angry about it though, so she wonders what is so important about this phone that was left to him in Peggy's will. 

“What is it?” Bruce asks, gesturing to it and taking money from both Sam and Clint. Clever man for betting on a determined Steve. 

Steve merely smirks. “If you want to hack a phone like this, it doesn’t matter how many times you try. You’ll never get what you want.” 

“It’s a pretty phone,” Wanda says, eyes locking down on the case. It clicks on what he means once she sees that the phone looks almost brand new. “Shame you have to break it.”

Steve presses his finger on the fingerprint sensor and then unlocks the phone with a knowing smile. When she peers over his shoulder, she sees that it is completely blank, like a new phone is. So she is right. And then he shuts the phone off again, before he pulls off the case and then stares at it. 

”No,” he says, shaking his head. His smile hasn’t faded. “I don’t think I will.”

”Aw come on,” Bucky says, looking at Steve strangely. Wanda senses curiosity from him, clear (ha ha) as day. “You gotta tell me what I just lost.”

”Never yours to begin with,” Steve corrects, and then he simply walks away, tossing the phone up and down in his left hand. He is still smiling. 

At this point, unlike the others, she could not care less about Steve’s secret phone. There are more important things out there (even about Steve hinself) to focus on and discover. And she is a little bit tired today. New York isn’t for the lightest of human beings.

But it _is_ , as she discovers the next morning, for gods and Asgardians. 

Unfortunately, she discovers this when she wanders down to the communal kitchen in a shirt and sweatpant combination that is threadbare ruined to the point where she’s sure that there are more holes and tears than actual cloth on her. But it is comfortable. 

Comfortable enough that she makes a cup of tea without realizing that someone else has started the kettle for her. Comfortable enough that she eats two oranges, a bowl of blueberries, and drinks all of her tea in quiet bliss. In fact, she grabs two muffins and sits back down in her own bubble. 

It isn’t after she finishes the first muffin that she notices the presence of other Avengers, who she nods a hello to. It isn’t after the second muffin that she notices the presence Thor and four insanely strong-looking people who really cannot be missed. It isn’t after she discards the muffin wrappers that she notices that the time is 1:13.

Wanda sighs, and goes to grab a giant mug of coffee. Honestly, she doesn’t know what she’s doing right now or if she’s hallucinating the brunette with the impressive spear or not, so coffee really cannot do anything but help her. She needs it. 

She finishes the entire mug of coffee in less than a minute, ignoring how hot the coffee is. Wanda is pretty sure most her friends are looking at her in concern. And maybe Tony and Clint are looking a little impressed.

“Hi,” she says, looking at the three male strangers and the formidable brunette with a spear who is most definitely not a hallucination. “I’m Wanda Maximoff.” 

Instantly Wanda realizes she’s in her holey pajamas talking to Asgardian royalty and warriors. And that they’ve probably been watching her this entire time. She refuses to be ashamed, because she doesn’t know if they can smell fear or not (and she’s not taking any chances, not when Steve and his freaky senses can probably smell embarrassment). 

“Are you okay?” Thor asks her, his face scrunched in concern, and suddenly she wonders just where Thor has been learning his English and standard speech, because ‘okay’ is a word that had taken her a long time to use in place of ‘well’ or ‘alright’. 

“I’m fine, thank you, just needed coffee,” she says, blinking as she also realizes that these are the first words that he has said to her since Ultron. She wonders why he has just accepted her, just like that, and then chooses not to question it. From what she’s heard, Thor just rolls with it. 

“Ah, yes! Stark’s life blood!” one of them says, and she smiles. 

“Wanda,” Thor seriously says focusing his attention back to her, “This is Volstagg, Fandral, Hogun, and Sif.” All of the men puff a little when Thor says their name, but Sif looks unmoved as ever. Wanda likes Sif a lot. 

“Hello,” she says again. “Nice to meet all of you.” 

Now she finally remembers that Steve had mentioned a visit from Thor and his friends a while ago, and that this is the visit. They must have arrived in the morning or something, and she had slept through it all, unaware. 

Instead of thinking about it more, she goes back up to her room and showers, changing into acceptable clothing (a dress and her jacket), before coming back down again. This time, she only sees Sif and Steve chatting, and everyone else has vanished. 

“... most powerful,” Steve is saying when he trails off and smiles at her. “Oh, and speak of the devil.” 

“Am I a devil, now?” Wanda asks teasingly. “My feelings have been hurt.” 

He rolls his eyes, so Wanda focuses her attention on Sif. She finds that Sif’s emotions and mind are no less clear than any of the Avengers or people, despite being of a different race. But that also makes sense, given that Thor is Asgardian and had been no less harder to manipulate during Ultron.

“I am so very terribly sorry,” he sarcastically responds, and Sif watches their conversation with excellently concealed amusement. Wanda would have never known if she couldn’t feel Sif’s humor pulse out. “My bad.” 

“Oh, fuck off,” she says. He sticks his tongue out at her. “You’re a child,” she says.

“Thanks,” he dryly says. “I appreciate it. Just like you’re going to appreciate me for telling Sif all about you.” 

She looks at Sif again. “Don’t listen to him. I’m sure anything bad he said about me is all false.” 

“You possess a great wealth of power,” Sif says, sounding interested. “Would you like to try and use it against me?” 

“Like... in a fight?” Wanda asks. “ _A physical one or one with abilities_?” 

“No restrictions,” Sif responds, and Wanda smiles in delight as Sif doesn’t even seem to pick up on the language change. Steve does, and he frowns at her. He should at least understand what Sif is saying, right? 

“Let’s go,” Wanda says in English with a smile. 

Wanda ends up leaving the gym with bruises and aches all over her. Everything hurts like hell, and she absolutely regrets agreeing to spar with Sif. Only belatedly does she realize that this is the same woman who fought mercilessly to become one of Thor’s righthands and closest friends, and the woman who’s probably lived with Loki in her life for longer than Wanda can imagine. Wanda’s only consolation is that she had gotten a wicked grin from Sif at the end, and somewhat of a loud exhale from the Asgardian. That was as much of an exhausted look she was going to get from Sif. 

Right before she heads into her room, she stops by the communal kitchen to grab a bottle of Gatorade before she heads to bed. For someone like her, it’s better for her to drink Gatorade or a power drink whenever she wakes up in the middle of the night. And she’s out of everything she has right now, and she knows that the communal kitchen always has something. 

Wanda walks in to find Pietro and Steve completely disheveled, and kissing frantically. And loudly. God. Ugh. She walks out as quickly as she had walked in, determined to erase the image from her mind. Why, god, why does he do this to her? And by he, she means both her brother and Steve. Why, god, why? 

In her haste to get into her room, she runs directly into Thor. 

“Oh, sorry,” he apologizes though she had run into him. “I had not meant to...” 

“What are you apologizing for?” Wanda asks. “It was me who ran into you. Sorry, about that, by the way.”

Thor smiles and shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.” 

Wanda smiles too, and then has a moment of impulsiveness. She blurts out, “I heard your brother has powers like mine.” 

Thor’s face drops a little, and she winces. Wanda remembers hearing about Loki dying at some point, fuck, there goes her idea about asking to compare spells and magic, yikes, what a bad idea. “He did, yes. Loki had a myriad of tricks and spells similar to yours.” 

“Oh,” she says politely, “I’m sorry I had, um, that was impolite of me.”

Thor shrugs it off. “It is of no worry. A brother’s loss is something I know you understand.” 

Wanda opens her mouth to say that she hadn’t lost Pietro, but then quickly shuts up. She doesn’t need to bring that up and rub it in. So she musters up a nod and then quickly flees. Before she does, though, she looks back to see that Thor is heading into the kitchen. 

“Thor!” Wanda calls out. “Don’t go in there!” 

“Why?” Thor asks. 

She clears her throat. “Pietro and Steve are most likely, uh, having sex.” Wanda stumbles around her words for a second, before realizing that she’s talking to the god of fertility (she wonders why thunder and fertility belong to the same god but whatever). 

“This is a new development, yes?” Thor asks, eyebrows furrowed. “I had thought that Steve’s lover happened to also be his shieldbrother, James.” 

Yeah, she’s not touching that with a ten foot pole. Wanda shrugs. “Ask Natasha.” 

Oh, Natasha is going to murder her if and when Thor asks about Steve’s love life. Mercilessly murder her without a spare consideration for being under duress. But also judging on what she knows about Thor, she’s probably also going to be murdered by _Steve_ if and when Thor asks. Actually, she doesn’t know which one would be worse. See, she knows what Natasha would do to her. But Steve? She has no clue. None. Wanda shudders to even think about it. 

She also really does not want to see Steve the next day or so, because she doesn’t think she’s going to be able to look him in the eye. 

But fate is not on her side, and she runs into him just a few hours later, when she is startled out of her sleep with a horrifying nightmare. 

As is customary, she goes down to the kitchen, thinking that there is no way that there is anyone there now, at this time. And there is no possible way that Steve and Pietro are having sex down in the kitchen for this long. At the very least they would have gone somewhere else. Hopefully. Probably. She’s going to go with probably. 

When she heads into the kitchen, though, she hears Steve talking into the phone, his voice tired as hell. Wanda wonders why he’s here right now. Any embarrassment she may have of facing him fades. Especially when he’s so very different from earlier, since now he’s in some business, assured mode. 

“Is this Daria’s Drinks? Hello, I’m Steve Rogers and... yes, I know. I sincerely do apologize on their behalf and... no, I’m not making any excuses, I called because I... no, no, um, no, I... no, I’m very sorry that we hadn’t... yes, I did... uh, I know that the um, repair costs must be through the roof with the damage they did so I wanted to offer to take care of all the bills? Repairs, renovations, and anything I could possibly do to recompense? And while everything is rebuilding, I would be more than happy to um, make up for the money that you would have gotten during sales and offers. Yeah. Yes. Normally. Actually, yeah, normally Tony Stark takes care of it but I had the Asgardians under my responsibility. No, I don’t want publicity. No, actually, _please_ don’t mention it. I don’t need anyone knowing about this. No. I don’t. It’s fine. I should be saying that to you. I really am sorry. Um. Would tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 be a good time? Perfect. Bye, thank you,” he says into the phone having a extremely hassling conversation Daria’s Drinks place. Wanda has a good feeling about what has happened, based on that, and _yikes_. 

“Long night?” Wanda asks quietly, making her presence known now. 

Steve whirls around to face her, surprised. He just sighs exasperatedly, a sardonic smile on his face. He rolls his eyes. “Well, you could say that,” he says, pulling a face. “Hey FRIDAY, is that the last of them?” 

“Yes, Captain Rogers,” FRIDAY responds, and clearly Wanda is missing something here. 

Taking pity of her confused face, Steve clarifies, “Apparently my favorite Asgardians decided to hit the town and paint the shops red. Three local, family-owned business stores are destroyed. Two are partially damaged. Daria’s was fully wiped.” 

“Why are you taking care of it?” Wanda asks, nodding and deciding to go with it. “Doesn’t Tony?” 

“Well I said I was going to,” Steve says with a completely fake grin, “And the team doesn’t exactly know yet. Neither does Pepper or PR.” He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, rubbing for a second. “God, I didn’t even think I could get headaches anymore.” 

“Serum?” Wanda asks. 

He huffs a laugh at that, bitter and cold. It’s completely surprising, since it came out of nowhere. “Yeah. Yeah, actually.” There’s something she’s not getting here, something that’s flying completely above her head. 

But since it’s Steve, and he’s got surprises in his DNA, she decides to give it a rest for right now, if only to not worsen the tiredness written all over him. 

“So,” she says instead, “How are you paying for it?” 

He shakes his head a little, a soft smile peeking through his weariness as some other memory comes to his mind. Wanda makes a conscious effort not to peek through. Thankfully, Steve doesn’t pay the memory any mind, and actually answers her question. 

“I, uh, have had an active bank account since 1943,” Steve says. “I did get paid as a technical Captain during the war, which meant I got a nice amount of interest, especially over the years. And then I had some share stocks that Howard reserved for me in case they ever found me and...turned out I woke up in the 21st century a multi-millionaire? That’s not even counting propaganda and fake film reels and all the royalties I could have sued for. So...”

“It makes you uncomfortable?” Wanda asks softly, because she can imagine the strangeness of having to scrounge for pennies, and then later never even having to _touch_  a single one. 

Steve sighs again and placed his head in his hands. Though by the way that his elbows are on the kitchen island, propping him up, he looks like he’s merely rubbing his face again. “Yeah,” he finally says, “It’s kind of weird.” 

“Hence the charity,” she sums up, fully knowing that she’s all but having a conversation by herself since Steve is parroting answers. 

“It’s not charity,” he denies, his voice muffled a little, “And Thor’s a friend. Especially since he actually tried to contain it and ended up calling me. For help.” 

“No, no, no,” Wanda corrects herself, “Not this. I meant the actually charity work you do. With—”

”Oh,” he says, “Well. It’s probably still not charity, just... helping out or something. I don’t know.” 

He looks very, very tired, suddenly, and very, very out of it. Wanda feels just a little bad. She also decides not to push. So she grabs her Powerade and then says, “Alright. Well, goodnight.” 

“Goodnight,” he says, still gently rubbing his face and lost in his thoughts. 

When Wanda goes to sleep, all she can dream of are tired eyes and Asgardians painting the town red. Though her dreams haunt her sleep, they are still much better than reality, for the moment. Reality fares far worse. 

She wakes up the next morning cursing her overactive mind, not for the first nor last time, and decides to shower and take care of her appearance before she heads downstairs. Something tells her that she shouldn’t look miserable today. Maybe it is the residual embarrassment from yesterday, but nevertheless, she does walk downstairs in her threadbare clothes at one in the afternoon. This time, she is in a comfortable dress and the time is nine in the morning. 

Everyone is stumbling into breakfast at this point. She is not the only one, but surprisingly, she is one of the more put-together people at the table. Yes! Score one for Wanda. 

She glances around and sees that two of the Asgardians—Fandral and Volstagg—are missing. In addition, Tony, Bruce and Steve are missing. Tony and Bruce being late is no surprise, but the fact that it is not Steve up and cooking breakfast currently is quite a surprise. But it explains the lack of ten thousand foods (Steve is a rightfully ambitious cook) sprawled out into the table. 

“Hey,” she nods to Natasha and Bucky, “Where’s Steve?” 

“Running, maybe,” Bucky shrugs, not too fazed about it. But Steve wouldn’t have gone running, not with how _tired_ he was. That just doesn’t make sense. Even with how relentless and stubborn Steve is, she knows he doesn’t go running in days when he’s injured or when he’s bone-tired. 

“FRIDAY?” Wanda asks, just to check. “Where is Steve?” 

“Captain Rogers is currently sleeping,” FRIDAY tells her. Before Wanda asks, FRIDAY says, “He has been sleeping since one.” 

“Eight hours?” Natasha asks, raising an eyebrow. “Straight? Damn.” 

“Pietro,” Wanda calls out to her twin, who zips to her. He raises both of his eyebrows and shrugs up, as if to ask what she wanted. She switches into Sokovian. “ _Did you sleep with Steve yesterday? In an actual bed, before you answer that._ ” 

“ _Not in an actual bed. He had to go somewhere last night. It was very late, but he also does happen to be Steve. Emergencies have no value of time,_ ” Pietro says, rolling his eyes a little. He switches into English. “Why? Since when do you want to know?” 

“No, just worried,” she says, shaking her head. “He looked very tired last I saw him.” 

Tony picks that exact moment to storm in and yell about last night’s Asgardians incident. Thor tries to apologize, and Clint asks FRIDAY to pull up pictures. The kitchen dissolves into madness. 

Wanda slips out of the kitchen discretely and goes back to her room. She runs into Steve, out of all people, on the way there. Instantly she gives him the once over. He’s dressed in sweatpants and a tank, again, but they differ from yesterday’s. Which makes sense as his hair is still damp from a shower. Wanda can say that he almost looks better, but his face hasn’t changed much. Stress lines and bone-tired weariness are still eked out onto his face, aches and pains from past and present overwhelmingly written all over him. 

“What’s up?” she asks, because it’s only been around fifteen minutes since she last asked FRIDAY about his sleep. 

“I should be asking you that,” he says. “FRIDAY said you wanted to talk? Well, FRIDAY also told me later that Tony found about last night.” Steve shudders. 

Wanda blinks. “Did FRIDAY wake you up? FRIDAY, did you wake Steve up?” 

“FRIDAY woke me up because I wasn’t sleeping well, near the end,” he says, brushing off her question. “Which is protocol, for me, by the way, don’t pin this on her or you. What did you want to talk about?” 

“I hadn’t,” Wanda denies. “I was just... worried.” 

His face softens a little. “About last night? Don’t worry about it, it’s basically part of the job at this point, blowing over things. Just ask Pepper.” Steve begins to smile, before he shudders again. “Actually, don’t ask Pepper. You’ll never recover from that kind of pain.”

Wanda starts to respond to that, make another joke or something, but he shakes his head again and cuts her off. 

“Thanks, though,” he says, smiling a little brighter. Wanda watches as the lines of stress and the painful aches melt away into a mask of brightness. She blinks, and stands there, even after Steve walks away. That transformation had happened too easily, too quickly for it not have have happened before. 

The change also had happened like it wasn’t even a thing that Steve knew he was doing at this point. Like the transformation was second nature, or a subconscious movement. 

It was Steve’s easy lie. 

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on my [tumblr](https://butonlyifyourecounting.tumblr.com/)!


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